The Simple Way to Get Ahead of Your Competitors (Use Video in Email)

You’re a smart person.

You recognize the value of email marketing, and you’re implementing it in your own business in order to improve conversation rates and grow your brand. And because you want to beat your competition, right?

But there’s one key thing you’re likely not doing with your email marketing that you should be.

This single email marketing strategy will skyrocket your efforts to create those conversations, build your brand and beat your competition. You’ll be sending emails that convert so much more efficiently than anyone else in your industry that you’ll be smacking yourself on the forehead and wondering why you’ve never used the strategy before.

That one key thing is video.

The Next Big Thing in Email Marketing

There’s no denying that there’s a huge advantage to using video in your emails.

In a report about the state of 2013 digital video, BrightRoll noted that when presented with both an online video advertisement and a TV ad, 29 percent of viewers remembered the message of the online video, compared with only 19 percent who viewed the TV ad alone.

That means using video is 53 percent more likely to make an impact on a viewer than investing money in a TV ad.

Maybe viewers remember these ads so much better because, according to a video by comScore, only about 1.3 percent of viewers’ time watching online video is spent viewing ads, so they don’t have to remember a lot of competing messages.

So this year, even though YouTube videos receive billions of views a month, marketers will spend only $4.14 billion on online video versus $66.35 billion on traditional TV advertising. Additionally, in a February 2013 survey from The Relevancy Group, only 25 percent of email marketers used video in 2013. As comScore’s Dan Piech said at the end of the video, these stats mean there is far less clutter and far more opportunity for you to brand yourself using video.

The Real-Life Example of Video Success

Do you see the great break your brand could get with video email marketing and how much it could help you get ahead of your competition? (You probably do, because you’re smart.)

To help cement the value of video in your brain, check out how British television channel Sky Atlantic seized the opportunity to include video in their email marketing and consequently saw massive results.

After scoring a deal with HBO to be the exclusive U.K.-based channel to broadcast Game of Thrones, Sky decided to use video in email marketing to get the word out about the series. They embedded this video in an email campaign sent out to their subscribers.

And it worked. The channel received 1 million+ views of the show’s TV trailer. Not because their audience saw the trailer on TV, mind you, but because they saw it in an email.

If this isn’t enough proof that video email marketing works, there’s more.

The Relevancy Group survey found that marketers who did use videos in their email marketing were rewarded for their investment: 55 percent saw higher click-thru rates, 44 percent noted an increase in the time a subscriber spent with the email, and 41 percent reported more sharing and forwarding of the emails.

Basically, video email marketing can give you a 280 percent higher return over plain old text emails. It’s as simple as that.

The Now-Working Functionality of Video in Email

“Now hold on,” you’re probably saying. “If this is such a lucrative and amazing opportunity, why aren’t more companies doing it? It can’t be that simple, right?”

See, asking those kinds of questions is why you’re smart.

Previously, including video in email was difficult. Because of the lack of a standard way to display videos online, there wasn’t an easy way to include this form of multimedia in emails and have it show up, let alone play if the user clicked on it. It’s why most email marketers and businesses have avoided including video.

But all of that has changed with the slow and steady adoption of HTML5.

HTML5 is the fifth revision of the HTML markup language, which improves the code’s overall performance, specifically in relation to the latest forms of multimedia (including video). It’s been in development and testing stages for years.

One of the beautiful things about HTML5 is its new video tag that helps any browser, program or app that’s adopted HTML5 standards to play the included video.

Consequently, any email client or service that uses HTML5 is able to show embedded videos in their emails without any deliverability problems.

According to EmailMonks.com, HTML5 video is now supported by 58 percent of these email clients, including those on iOS devices and Outlook. The remaining 42 percent will see a fallback image of your video instead of the video itself (but it will be linked to your video’s landing page or wherever you direct the link to go).

To circle back to your original question, no, video in email is not entirely simple. Yes, it takes a lot of time to think up and make a quality video. And yes, it can (but doesn’t have to) cost a lot of money.

However, the act of implementing video in email marketing is far simpler and easier than it’s ever been before.

HTML5’s adoption has made this possible, and its continual adoption will only fuel the ability for more than 58 percent of your audience to see video in the future.

The Ultimate Reason to Use Video Email Marketing

You’ve just seen the proof of how current companies that have adopted video in email have reaped the rewards of their decision, both with more profit and with more customer engagement.

You understand that adopting video email marketing now will give you the same results. You know that video is the way to interact with your customers and beat your competition by propelling your brand forward.

So take those smarts to the next level, and start using video email marketing. You’d be crazy not to.

Are you using video email marketing? What results have you seen? Share your story in the comments below!