Videos in email: case studies and resources

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on November 13, 2007

One of the long unanswered questions about email marketing is whether you can combine video and email in a way that works.

Like many interactive features, there are question marks over how reliably videos display when viewed within an email.

It now seems some best practices are emerging, given some recent posts and articles that crossed my desktop.

First, news of three separate companies claiming significant success with using videos in email campaigns.

Diana Dilworth reports on the results achieved by the Intercontinental Hotel Group and Wachovia. While MarketingSherpa has a case study on a video email campaign by Brighter Blooms Nursery.

The common factor in all three cases: the emails contain links to videos hosted at a website. Not videos embedded in the email itself.

If the sensible move is to use email to drive people to your video message, how do you best format the call to action?

A best practice might also be emerging here. eROI's Dylan Boyd and the folk at Emma Email Marketing both have blog posts and screenshots praising email which include both text links and image links to the online video.

The clever bit is that the images are snapshots of a video player showing a still from the video. So clicking on the player (as if you wanted to use it) will take you off to the website for online viewing.

Check the comments section on Dylan's post for discussion on the validity of the approach and an alternative.

Video looks to have a bright future among the YouTube generation and in a web world replete with enough high-speed broadband not to care about bandwidth issues anymore.

For more help on your video efforts, try this list of 150+ online video tools and resources from the folk at Mashable.