There are a variety of online marketing strategies out there, but nearly all of them rely on some form of content.
Whether it’s a blog post, an online ad, or an email, content is what drives users’ interest and gets them to become leads.
One of the best types of content out there is video marketing. Videos are great for many reasons, but more than anything, they’re highly engaging. It makes sense, then, that you might want to use videos in different campaigns.
If you’re looking for somewhere to use videos, consider email marketing. While it might not be the first strategy that comes to mind, email marketing works great with videos. Below, we’ll go over some tips on how to use videos in marketing emails. Keep reading to learn more.
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Video email marketing is simply including videos in your marketing emails. Using email marketing videos can help capture reader attention and break up monotonous walls of text in your emails.
The type of videos you can use in emails include:
The videos don’t have to be your own creation either. For example, you could embed videos from other creators if you feel they fit within the theme or messaging of a particular email. It’s always best to credit the original creator in these cases.
Before we get into how to use videos in marketing emails, let’s first establish why you’d want to do that to begin with.
The answer mostly comes down to the fact that videos are widely recognized as one of the best marketing content formats for driving engagement. If you’ve ever tried to read a book while a TV is on nearby, you’ll understand why—the combination of moving visuals and audio is hard to look away from.
Furthermore, many people out there just aren’t that interested in textual content in the first place. Maybe they don’t like reading, maybe they don’t have the patience to wade through paragraphs of text, or maybe they simply find written content boring. Whatever the case, those people will still be attracted to videos.
It’s only natural, then, that you’d want to use video content in your email marketing, just like you would on your website or on social media. People who might immediately delete a text-based email could end up sticking around to watch a video, making those emails more effective.
Now that we’ve established the reason for including videos in your email marketing campaigns, let’s talk about some tips and tricks for implementing those videos, including:
Our first email marketing video tip is to mention the video in your email subject line. Why? Because many users will simply delete marketing emails without opening them. Lots of those people probably assume the email is entirely textual content, so if they see that it includes a video, they might choose to open it instead.
There are multiple ways to do this—for one, you could simply end your subject line with the word “video” in brackets. Alternatively, you could integrate the word more organically. For instance, maybe your subject line reads, “A must-watch video about budgeting in [current year].”
However you do it, using this tactic will likely earn your emails a much higher open rate.
Part of the purpose of using marketing email videos is to make your emails more engaging. So, it makes sense to use other strategies that boost engagement, too—and one of those strategies is email segmentation.
Segmenting your email recipients into different groups is a great way to create more personalized content. For instance, you might send one email campaign to your current clients and another to people who are only just getting to know you.
That means you can be more specific with the type of video content you send to each group. If you try to create a video that appeals to everyone, from long-term clients to the person who visited your site one time, it probably won’t be very effective.
Related: Market segmentation: The no-nonsense guide (w/ examples)
We just established that you shouldn’t make a single video for all points in the sales funnel. However, that doesn’t mean you should only market to one level of the funnel. Sure, market to each level separately, but do still market to all of them.
Email marketing is great because it’s effective for everything from top-of-funnel content to bottom-of-funnel content. For users near the top of the funnel, you can make videos educating them about your industry, while for bottom-of-funnel users, you can send videos encouraging a purchase of a particular product or service.
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We’ve talked a lot about how to incorporate your videos into emails, but you may be wondering what you should make videos about in the first place. The answer depends largely on the specific audience you’re targeting, but one good option is product or event announcements.
If your company is launching a new product or holding a major event of some kind, a video can be a great way to communicate that information. It will hold users’ attention and add some additional “spice” to the announcement, making viewers more excited about it.
Another topic you can make videos about is company culture. What does that mean? Essentially, it’s a more relaxed type of video where, rather than promoting a specific product or service, you simply give a behind-the-scenes look at some element of your company.
Maybe you’re explaining how your team operates, maybe you’re introducing some of your employees, or maybe you’re simply doing a tour of your facility. Whatever it is, videos that give users a look at your company culture are great for encouraging familiarity and trust from your buyers.
Finally, you can use marketing email videos as bonus content in emails that are primarily textual. That is to say, while you can build some emails entirely around videos, you can also tag videos onto the end of text-based emails.
In this scenario, the bulk of the email would be like a non-video email, relying mostly on text and images. But as a bit of bonus content at the end, you could add a video to keep users engaged a bit longer.
That means all of your emails could potentially benefit from video content, even when that content isn’t the main focus.
Looking for help using videos in email marketing? Look no further than Nutshell. Our customer relationship management (CRM) platform is perfect for helping you manage and automate email campaigns based on advanced customer data, including putting videos in email marketing. Of course, we understand that you may not want to jump in head-first without knowing what you’re in for. That’s why we offer a 14-day free trial of Nutshell so that you can get familiar with the platform before committing. Get in touch with us today to get started!
Nutshell Campaigns plugs directly into your CRM data, so you can create highly targeted audience segments, track the impact of your emails in real-time, and manage all your communications out of a single tool. Get started for free!
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