Many people are using the system described below for engaging their email audiences with video. Because you can’t embed video in email (yet) this is the only way to do it. We are very predictable with links to video – as you can see by the numbers below.
The other bit of research on video viewing shows the dramatic drop-off rate of viewing a video after the first minute – That’s why the 49 second video was generally watched almost to the end by most viewers. Keep that in mind as you create your own promotional video.
I read in a recent Marketing Profs Email newsletter:
In a post at the Emma blog, Edwin Acevedo tells the story of VideoLink, a video-production company that wanted to highlight its skills in an email campaign that showed off new features at a redesigned website. “They made a short video [hosted by CEO Gina Chudnow],” he says, “added a screen shot to their email and linked it to a video landing page they made through a service called Flimp On-Demand.”
The strategy paid off with a clickthrough rate of 26.2 percent, and nearly 65 percent of those who launched the video watched it to completion—all 49 seconds.
“[T]here’s no perfect way to embed video to play within an email (yet),” notes Acevedo. “But what VideoLink did is fairly common and effective: use screen shots and text links to send people to a landing page that hosts the video.”
To support the use of video in email campaigns, Acevedo cites these findings from Forrester:
- 71 percent of online audiences watch Internet video.
- The number of video streams likely will double by 2013.
- Video in email can double or triple clickthrough rates.