It's common to use video to increase engagement with your content. It's a great way to teach about your product or otherwise attract attention to your brand. Video is essential to modern marketing, so it makes a lot of sense to incorporate your videos with your email campaigns.
Adding a video to an email isn't as straightforward as it sounds, however. It is not an industry best practice to embed a video directly into your email, as it may actually harm your marketing efforts. Thankfully, there are other ways to add video into your email marketing content and improve your cross-channel engagement.
Act-On's Email Composer does not provide the functionality to embed video in your email, and here are a few reasons why:
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Most Email Clients do not support Embedded Videos Popular email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook do not support video embedding in their emails, making your videos unplayable for anyone who uses these email services. |
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Embedding Video can send your Email straight to Spam Video embedding has historically been used to transmit malicious code to its recipients. This means that emails with embedded video code are frequently sent directly to spam, which can negatively impact your sender reputation. This ultimately harms your open and click rates. |
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Providing a Link to a Video is a much better Marketing practice When your Contacts have to click through to view your video, this increases your cross-channel engagement and drives traffic to your channel on sites like YouTube. It also increases your email clickthrough rates, and actually improves your sender reputation, and bolsters deliverability. |
Including videos in your Email Marketing is still possible! Continue reading for two ways that you can add a link to your videos in your email design.
Ways to Add a Video Link to your Email
Method 1: Use a Thumbnail Image
Our suggested best practice is to design a static image or GIF to look like a video player that acts as a thumbnail for your video. Then, add a link to the website or landing page where the video is hosted. The image itself looks like a video and is clickable.
Steps:
- Create a thumbnail image for your video and upload it to the Image Library
- We suggest adding a play button, so it actually looks like a video player and obviously takes you to a video. This can significantly increase clickthroughs.
- Copy the URL for the video; this will be your Target URL
- In the Act-On Message Composer, navigate to Design > Content > Blocks
- Drag and drop a Rich Text block or Image block into your message
- Upload your image, add alt-text for screenreaders (optional), and add your Target URL
- Click OK, then Save
Method 2: Use a Bulletproof Button
If you don't have graphic design skills or want a slicker email design, you can also create a button that links to your video. This will serve as a call-to-action, which is also good for improving your email engagement.
See our guide for more information on creating a button for your email message: Using Bullet Proof Buttons in Emails.