Gone are the days of boring, static email messages. As the digital world undergoes a humanizing and visual revolution, companies are also looking to improve their email strategies. People are regularly inundated with emails – it’s crucial that yours stand out and connect with readers.
To address this need, online tools are emerging that help businesses do more with email. Read on to learn about the benefits of humanized emails, tools you can use to create dynamic, audiovisual messages with ease, and tips for how to make effective video marketing content.
Why should you humanize emails?
People receive a lot of emails each day – you can’t afford to be generic. To get views and clicks, you have to reach out with a message that is crafted for each individual on your mailing list, not a mass group of recipients.
One way to accomplish that kind of specificity is through data-driven advertising. It’s possible through technology to store information about customers’ previous purchases, find products that are similar, and then distribute emails with content related to a customer’s purchasing history.
You can also monitor which emails customers do not open, and which they open, but do not click through. That data can help you send appropriately customized follow up emails. You can try, for example, a different theme if an email was not even opened. If it was opened, you can try the theme again with a different slant, or a different offer.
All of these efforts contribute to a single goal: generating emails that connect with each person they reach, which results in more emails opened and clicked through. Video content in emails can take this connection to the next level.
What are the benefits of incorporating audio and video in emails?
Plenty of research has been conducted to explore the relationship between audiovisual email content and click-through rate. Although exact numbers differ between studies, the overall message is the same: emails with audiovisual content have a much higher click-through rate than emails without it. Research shows that engagement is also dramatically increased when you present viewers with rich media.
These findings make sense. The beauty of video in email is that it relies on images, which can be very striking, to interact with customers on a personal level. Rather than a wall of text, customers get to link a face with a business. Instead of a formal document, which can feel stiff, they can enter into a casual conversation with a representative from a company that feels authentic, not contrived.
The fact something so low-key can be so powerful contributes to another benefit of videos created for emails: they can be inexpensively made, yet still beneficial to a business. In many ways, the more laid back a video, the better. Once your production levels get very high, you will appear to be capturing not an authentic conversation on film, but rather making a calculated commercial. The latter style could turn viewers off.
What tools are available to assist with video email marketing?
Not all businesses have the resources to call upon a robust marketing team. Several products have been created to accommodate this need, offering ways for even non-technical users to create, send, track, and analyze emails that contain video content.
One such option is GetResponse Video Marketing. This product is geared towards non-technical users who want to email rich media content, but who don’t want to invest in a lot of expensive software. GetResponse allows users to create dynamic emails with the aid of templates through simple drag-and-drop processes. They also offer a media library, where you can store your video and then specify where it should be sent, whether it’s a social network or specific recipient.
It also provides technology to help you monitor how well your emails are doing. You can use their email intelligence program to see how recipients respond to your email, which is important data to know if you want to distribute worthwhile messages.
Another option is Flimp Video Solutions. This company provides simple ways to develop dynamic email content, too. Whether you want to send video brochures or postcards, this marketing platform lets you drag and drop videos, links, buttons, graphics, and text into a cohesive electronic message. It also provides data on how recipients respond to your emails.
Despite the ease of these do-it-yourself programs, you still might want to leave dynamic content up to professionals. There are plenty of skilled videographers and marketers who would be happy to take on your project. Although going this route is more costly, their expertise could pay off very well.
Email of the future will demand more than text. Embrace the change now, and it could result in better viewer engagement, a higher click-through rate, and greater overall business success.
Hi Charles!
Thanks for the post! Our new Email Creator really does allow people to focus on the content and not worry about the design. The more we do to make it easier for people to focus on the relationships and the conversions which come from good relationship managment, the better!
If you have any questions of comments, please feel free to ping me on Twitter: @Hugeheadca
Regards,
jim
Interesting post. To add to it, there are solutions available today that allow email marketers to send rich and fully interactive emails to their base for instant engagement inside the email itself. So, instead of offering a video image that needs to be clicked on and played in a separate tab/window, imagine the possibility of playing the video right in the email itself and then allowing the recipient to take more actions, such as liking, sharing, commenting on the video, navigating between different menus, purchasing and any other action they normally perform on a web page – all without leaving the email.
Connecting on a personal level is the key to successful email campaigns and, yes, video, is the most engaging way to build these connections, so it’s essential to add video to the mix. But, it’s also important to make your content shareable. Cinsay’s social commerce tool offers a managed solution for clients where we handle video production and create an all-in-one, shareable video smart stores for clients. We also offer MyCinsay–our DIY solution for those who prefer to manage their own social commerce campaigns with our intuitive CMS.