The good folks at  Wistia – a video tracking company decided to, in their words,  ‘eat their own dog food’ by using their own online video tracking service to monitor the effectiveness of adding video to their email marketing activities. (I prefer ‘fly your own jets’ as far as marketing metaphors go…)

You can read the results on a recent blog post but here is a quick summary:

1. Click through rates were 3 to 4 times higher with video
2. Visitors spend more time on site with video
3. You can track specific benefits of video content – see where visitors lost interest or chose to engage the company further
4. They also used video engagement as an indication for further lead gen, with measured success.

Admittedly the last two items are associated with the services this company provides but there are hundreds of articles and blog posts that support the idea that adding video to your email can have a significant effect on the effectiveness of that email. Here are a few:

http://www.smartmarketmovie.com/eric/videos-email-marketing-campaign/

http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/iland/2009/08/video-email-when-to-use-it.html

http://www.strongmail.com/resources/blogs/email_marketing_insights/2009/03/how-to-leverage-video-in-your.php