by Jennifer O’Brien

More and more companies are including videos in their email marketing campaigns. Past technical obstacles are no longer a problem with the advances in technology. Studies show that people are more likely to watch a video than read a message and emails containing video are opened five times more than emails without video. There has been a prediction that by 2013, 90% of web traffic will be caused by video.

There are many benefits of having video in your email marketing campaign. Some researchers suggest that people are 85% more likely to buy a product if they watched a video describing it than if they simply read about it. There have been significant increases in conversion rates and return on investment. Some companies report click through rates increasing by over 96% from video. It provides a richer interaction between business and consumer and is becoming a common practice.

One way to place a video in your emails is to put a thumbnail image of the video in the email and clicking on the image redirects the subscriber to a landing page.  It is also possible to have the whole video play in the email with no redirecting. You can also just place a link to a video in the email instead of embedding it within. If you do embed the image within the email, you should add a text link below the video describing its content because some people have an image blocker set up on their emails.

One important thing to keep in mind is that people are not likely to watch a lengthy video. You should try to keep it less than one minute long. Subscribers are busy so they need to watch videos that are short and to the point. It is important for the video to have a clear message and offer useful information. The video should clearly relate to the objectives in your campaign and portray the brand correctly.

Don’t make the video the focus of the whole email. Remember to continue giving consideration to the other elements of the email because not everyone will watch the video. There are a variety of reasons why someone might not view a video in their email so it’s important to keep meaningful text and links. For the subscribers who never want to view videos in their email, you should give them the option of opting-out of the emails that contain video. This will help ensure that your subscribers are being sent emails with the type of information they enjoy receiving.