Looking for an easy way to increase subscriber engagement in your email newsletter? Why not try video? Video attracts interest for a number of reasons, including:
- It’s a change of pace in users’ workdays. Many people spend a large portion of their working hours reading, and video can give them an excuse to take a break.
- It’s mobile-friendly. About 20% of email newsletters are now read on mobile devices. Reading large amounts of text on a smartphone can be arduous. Any video hosting service worth its salt supports playback on mobile devices.
- It’s an exciting way to present information. If done well, video can present your ideas in an engaging, interesting fashion.
Don’t Embed Video in an Email - Link to it with a Screenshot
Only one major email client (Apple Mail) supports embedded video. Instead of embedding, take a screenshot from your video and link it to the URL of your video so users can view it in their browsers. Be sure to include a “play” icon in the middle of the screenshot so users know it’s a video, and not just a still image. Many video hosting services, including Wistia, will auto-generate screenshots and newsletter video links for you.
Testing by Wistia and MailChimp showed a huge increase in user response by implementing video in an email newsletter. In Wistia’s test, they experienced a clicks/open rate increase of over 300% when adding video to an (otherwise identical) email newsletter. When MailChimp experimented with incorporating video into their email newsletter, text links in the email averaged a 4-8% click-through rate, while the video earned a 62% click-through rate.
Want to improve the performance of your company’s email marketing? talk to us. We can help you utilize a variety of effective, measurable techniques (including video) to grow and engage your subscriber base.
