A number of recent reports (see links below) are claiming that adding video to your email is a great way of increasing the effectiveness of your email marketing program. Currently the best way to add video to an email is to include a graphic (screen capture) in the email that looks like a video player and that links through to video hosted on your site or elsewhere. There are other options to actually include video within your email but these methods are not consistent, easy to implement or proven (see links below for more detail).

Anecdotally, the evidence is very encouraging:

“When not linking to video his click through rate is between 20-27%…when linking to online video it’s consistently between 51-65%”

 “… a screen grab was clicked on more than 5 times as often as the text link.”

“Linking to video doubles click through rate”

“ another example, Eric Guerin reported a 175% increase in clickthroughs when video content was included in his company’s email”

 Bottom line, if you have have video assets you should be testing them in your email marketing campaigns.

 Articles and Reports on Email Marketing with Video:

http://www.getelastic.com/embedded-video-email/

http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/iland/2009/03/video-email-current-practices.html

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

http://stylecampaign.com/blog/?p=36

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