David Daniels recently published his Five Trends to Watch in 2010, and one of the trends is video email. He points out that video has been around the email channel for the last decade, but expects to see the use of video and animation to increase this year.

Popularity of online video

People like to watch video clips. The number of streaming videos watched online in the UK is increasing quickly. According to the comScore Video Metrix, the proportion of UK viewers who watched video content online in Q2 2009 grew by 47% year-on-year, which equates to 4.7 billion videos. ESP GetResponse’s recent analysis found that emails containing videos received, on average, 5.6% higher open rates, and 96.38 % higher CTRs than non-video emails.

Oh, and another great thing about videos: people like to share them. This is what makes videos particularly appealing to marketers - the enormous pass-along viral potential. The popularity of videos - combined with the sharing nature of email - is making email video an enticing proposition.

Challenges and choices

Obviously marketers are keen to take advantage of their popularity and using them in the marketing mix – including in emails. But the use of video in an email has to done correctly if they want the email to get delivered into the inbox and to display properly. Here’s a brief overview of choices for including videos in your email:

Link to a back or landing page

This is probably the easiest best-bet solution right now: embed the video on a web landing page, or back page of an email newsletter, and use a link in the home page of the email that lands in the inbox to drive traffic to view the video on the back page.

Screenshot that looks like a video

A .jpg or .gif image crafted to look like it’s the video in pause mode – and encourages the recipient to click to watch. A click takes the subscriber through to where the video is located online. One of the best descriptions of the process of providing video successfully in an email is to “Design for failure” – as in offering what will render if the image doesn’t show up.  Therefore, a text link should be included below the image, as well as relevant information in the image’s alt tag.

As an animated gif

Animated gif images (that mimic videos) can give the illusion of a video, and are mentioned in Daniel’s trend watch as strong performers for marketers. While there are blocking issues for these gifs, such as in Outlook, it is still a choice to be considered and the issues worked through. To see this in action, visit Stylecampaign’s Twilight example here. Email Marketing Reports provides more information on the pros and cons of animated gifs. Smith-Harmon takes a look at a new spin on this gif: the embedded video gif. (Again, as with all images that contain a live link, a text link should be included below the image, in case it is blocked.)

Embedding or attaching a video

Though embedding a video - and the use of script and flash, etc. - in an email can cause huge delivery and/or rendering issues; marketers are tackling the challenges because of the strong results that can be achieved. Attaching videos can be very problematic in regards to delivery and bandwidth – and in the majority of situations best avoided. Mark Brownlow reviews all these options in Video email update: can you embed them?”

Test for best results

As with any other content offerings in emails, marketers have to work to entice subscribers to click videos.  Test for best results for rendering, delivery and of course clicks. For example, test the use of the word video in the subject line, the placement of the link to the video in your copy, etc.

Read (lots) more on this topic

The topic of email videos has been addressed in great depth at these resources: Mark Brownlow’s round up of options, examples and results at Email Marketing Reports. A look at what’s on the horizon for email video delivery from Email Insider (which includes Goodmail Systems CertifiedVideo service, which enables both audio and video). And a good slide presentation overview from LiveClicker: State of Video Email Marketing in 2009.

About: denise cox is Newsletter Specialist for European ESP Newsweaver. She sits on the DMA UK’s Email Marketing Council.