Small businesses and ecommerce giants alike are leaning on email marketing more than ever.
It's a fact of (marketing) life: small businesses have to send marketing emails. At the same time, email fatigue has made it challenging to grab the attention of busy prospects. Even the best subject line or email body copy can’t always inspire a prospect to take action. Enter video.
For example, direct-to-consumer plant brand Bloomscape is proving the power of ecommerce video in the ways they use video, which ranges from educating customers on plant care to virtual greenhouse tours.
“Video is a great storytelling tool for Bloomscape. Our product is visual and has an emotional connection for people. Buying a plant is not just a transactional thing, and video conveys that spirit.”
How can you send a video through email?
In marketing, an emotional connection is worth its weight in gold. Marry that with the numbers: email marketing has skyrocketed in the last decade as a way to communicate with consumers.
It’s likely that you’re already using both email and video. But have you tried putting them together? Here are some great ways to use Vimeo to create video email marketing campaigns that stand out.
What is video email marketing, anyway?
How to use video in email marketing and ideas for your next campaign
Vimeo offers hundreds of templates to create high-impact social videos in an instant. With Vimeo Create, you'll find music options, professionally-designed layouts, and a purpose-specific story flow is already prepared for you — all you have to do is customize it to your liking.
Go with the defaults or get lost playing around with options for layout, color palette, and music to really make it your own.
1. Delight your email list with a little warmth and silliness
Using a fun GIF inserts a bit of levity into your email message and builds rapport. Film a video of your dancing feet, balance a pencil on your finger, rub your hair on a balloon. And then connect that moment of silliness to the message you want to convey. Or, use a GIF as a playful introduction that takes some of the formality away from saying hello to your email list.
For example, you can include a GIF, like the one below, created by video company Concurrent Productions as part of their welcome email to new students in an online course.
2. Send a thank you message with video
Everyone from your mom to your customer wants to be genuinely thanked. As a best practice, tell a quick story of specific and relevant impact in your thank you message.
It can be as simple as, “Thank you for your survey answers! Because of you, we’ve made awesome improvements to our products.” This also sets you up nicely to reach out to your audience when you launch that new and improved product or service!
3. Share a tutorial or helpful how-to
A step-by-step guide might be the way to go but a few beats that spark a creative idea can also be effective.
Even a short video can be inspiring and get people to think: “That’s a great idea and super easy!” A how-to video like the one below, for example, ignites a creative spark for your customer to motivate the sale.
4. Announce a product launch or limited time sale
A great advantage to video here is that you can visually show how a product works (for both software and actual physical product) more than a still image can.
5. Announce e-courses or e-learning opportunities
OK, this idea got me so excited that as I was writing this article, I spontaneously made my own video with a Vimeo Create template and it was so easy. This video makes it super easy for me to announce the online course my company created to help people make more authentic brand videos.
6. Share details about a contest or giveaway
Video can be a fun way to deliver simple instructions for entry while generating excitement for your contest or giveaway!
Tell your customers to tag your business or products in their own user-generated content (UGC) on social media. Bake that UGC into your email marketing for a product or service, or encourage your email audience to follow you on social (with a GIF that clicks through to your IG, for example).
A great way to get UGC is to promote a contest with a giveaway. Have customers send you their silliest video with your product and add it to your next email campaign. You might even discover a new use for your own product!
7. Tell a story about your company, products, or services
Authentic human emotion is truly something that we will never stop enjoying. Storytelling is arguably what makes humans unique among animals. When you combine real emotion with a specific story in video, you connect with your customers on a deeper level.
Take, for instance, Bloomscape founder Justin Mast's story, where he shares his passion for indoor gardening and talks about the deep love and care he feels for the plants his brand grows and sells.
8. Introduce your team to the world with an "About Us" video
Who we’re buying from matters, now more than ever. We want to know who’s behind the brand and what they’re like. Do we like you? Can we trust you? When you answer those questions in an "About Us" video that you send out as part of an email marketing campaign, you make a powerful connection!
This "About Us" spot from Huge, a Brooklyn-based digital agency, is a great example of a video that introduces their team, their personality, and company culture.
9. Share testimonial videos singing your praises
You can tell me all day that you’re the best, but I probably won’t believe you. But when your customer tells me, that’s credible. In fact, a 2019 survey showed 79% of people watch customer testimonial videos and 77% of those say a testimonial video was a convincing factor in their buying decision.
With Vimeo Create templates, creating a customer testimonial video from written reviews is easy. Even if you’re not able to film your customer, these tools help you create a dynamic video testimonial with images and text.
10. Make content that aligns with where your segment falls in the customer journey
If they’re a new lead, don’t try to push sales with an overly salesy video. Instead, opt for something more personal, human, and authentic rather than salesy from the jump.
New leads want to know who you are and what you care about, so lean in to your own vulnerability to reveal your beliefs and values. If you align, you’ll likely get your prospect to the next step in your process. A founder's story, testimonial, or company introduction is a great idea for video in the early stage of your customer journey.
Why use video in an email?
How to use video to capture leads
How do you include a meaningful and effective call to action in your video?
With Vimeo, you have a couple options:
1. Add a link on the end of your embedded videos.
2. Create customizable contact forms. These are available within Vimeo Create when a user is logged in.
These contact forms are a unique and personalized way to capture leads directly from the video player, which then syncs all the info you collect with top email marketing platforms. Add custom end screens and boost viewer interaction while you’re live with engagement tools like Q&A, pools, and audience chat.
It’s a powerful call to action.
It’s important to note that customizable contact forms are a tool most effectively used to build your email list rather than something to be included directly in email campaigns. You can embed a video with a contact form on your website, for example.
How do I embed video in an email?
Technically, you can’t embed an entire video directly into an email because of email provider limitations for video. However, all Vimeo users can add an embedded GIF into a direct email (from your Gmail, for example). Connect your Vimeo Business account to a host of email marketing platforms for additional embedding options.
Video email marketing integrations you should know about
Whether you’re in the early stages of building your email lists or already launching full scale email marketing campaigns, we have you covered.
Vimeo integrates with top video email platforms like Hubspot, Constant Contact, and Mailchimp. With these integrations, you can:
- Generate and convert new leads with the customizable Contact Forms you’ve embedded in your video
- Integrate and automatically sync contact form submissions with Hubspot, Mailchimp, and Constant Contact
- Add video to email with Vimeo Create’s unique integration (or at least GIFs).
- Track your video’s performance
When you include a link to a full video in your email marketing you can track where your customers are watching like web, tablet, or mobile. Optimize their next viewing experience based on these analytics.
You also want to A/B test. For a particular audience segment, one GIF may perform better than another, or an image of a play button linked to the video itself may be best.
Generally, video email marketing tools like Mailchimp and Constant Contact are used more often by small businesses. Hubspot is also a robust sales CRM and has more advanced features for larger organizations.
What about GIFs in an email?
Video email marketing best practices
Now that you have an overview of what’s possible, I hope you’re excited as I was to try out some new tools! As you’re experimenting with powerful promotional marketing videos, keep these helpful best practices in mind.
- Use a static image with a “play” button on the screen. This is one way to get around email provider limitations for video. Link that image to your video URL.
- Don’t overdo it or annoy your email audience. Make sure video is the best way to present your message and plan your campaigns with video for messages that really need to be shared through video.
- Include “video” in the email subject line to entice a higher open rate. This is a great tactic when video is the main feature of your message but not recommended if you’re just using a GIF as a visual addition. Make sure that you’re not misleading your audience.
- Plan ahead and have a way to measure your video’s success. Vimeo makes it easy to track total views, impressions, view rate, viewer engagement, and more. When you use contact forms, you can download form submissions as a CSV from all your videos or just individual ones.
- Make sure your video doesn’t distract from your core call-to-action (CTA). If you want the user to take an action beyond watching your video, make that very clear. Your video should funnel your user to take a clear action. If your end goal is to make a sale, make sure your video leads them there.
- Keep it simple. For GIFs, you want to keep the file size as small as possible without compromising quality. Here are some tips on sending large video files.
- Think of video email marketing in the context of your full customer journey. Use video to get your prospects interested in learning more so you can take them to the next step.
Despite (or because of) the limitations you have to include video in email marketing campaigns, you have the opportunity to be creative.
All email marketers have these limitations. So get an edge by using Vimeo tools and tricks to creatively integrate video into your messaging.
Send emails that won’t make them hit snooze.
Vimeo empowers Email marketers and creators of all kinds with tools for producing, sharing, and managing their projects. Features include screen capture software software, a teleprompter tool, and detailed analytics.
