Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes courtesy of Jon Spenceley, Community Manager at Vidyard, a video marketing platform provider.
Many modern marketers struggle with video from a strategic perspective. You may have found yourself asking how to decide where video is appropriate, and when it would be most effective. When incorporating video into your email campaigns, this challenge grows even further.
The two most common questions our customers ask are:
- Do I embed the video directly in the email or should I push my prospects to a landing page? and
- What kind of video content is valuable in email campaigns?
Adding video to your email campaigns is easy, trackable, and most importantly, engaging content that drives click throughs. In an attempt to address the second question, here are 3 situations we see where you can drive results by including a video in your email campaign:
1. Share an interview
Thought-provoking educational content is valuable at any stage of the sales pipeline, and interviews with thought leaders are great content to share with your prospects. Make sure the image you choose is high quality, features the interview subject, and provides details about what your readers will learn from the video. For example:
For interviews, it may be best to link your reader to a landing page rather than trying to embed the video directly in the email – not every email client will play videos directly from the email, so landing pages are always a safe bet.
2. Teasers for upcoming webinars or events
Webinars are a common lead gen tactic, in addition to serving as a great platform for thought leadership and knowledge exchange for your community of prospects and customers. Once someone has signed up for your webinar, your follow-up emails are a great place to include teaser videos to your speakers, or content.
Attendees who watch the content are likely very engaged with your upcoming event or webinar, so be sure to track who watches! In a recent email to event attendees, we included three pieces of video marketing content, including a video interview with our founder. The email had a 21% click through rate, and the interview accounted for just under half of the clicks.
3. Convey product news
When you are launching a new feature for your product, regardless of how simple or complex, video is a great way to help get users up to speed quickly. When you email your customers announcing your product update, include a link to watch a video on how this new feature works. It will cut down on incoming support requests, and if your explainer video is part of a YouTube channel or video hub featuring other support videos, may encourage your customers to explore other help videos along the way.
When we added our Eloqua integration to Vidyard, we emailed all of the users that had expressed an interest with an intro email, and a link to this video going over the major functionality of our integration. It was viewed more 300 times, just through the email:
Email presents a special opportunity to include video, as it is a primary method of communicating product updates, company news, and support inquiries for clients and prospects alike.
When adding video to your campaigns, always make sure to properly track who clicks, and who watches. Make sure this data is integrated into your marketing automation, and you can use video behavior data to score, nurture and segment your leads.
Click here to check out more tips on how to drive ROI with video content.
3 Ways to Integrate Video into Email Nurture Campaigns is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing