Email is one of the most reliable ways to get in touch with your customers. In 2019, the percentage of Internet users who send at least one email per month is projected to be 90.9%.
But emailing them isn’t enough. What matters is the type of content you provide them with. It needs to be helpful, compelling and engaging in a way that will lead to them fulfilling your call-to-action.
One of the most effective content formats is video. 85% of Internet users watch video on any device and this content format is only going to continue to gain popularity.
Based on the percentage of users who check email combined with the percentage of users who view online videos, it makes sense to incorporate video into your email marketing strategy. Let’s look at eight creative ways to do just that.
1. Create a “How-to” Series
Depending on the product or service you offer, you can produce a series of short “how-to” videos providing instructions and/or insights to your audience on how to use a tool, complete a task, or explain a process relevant to your industry.
This has two primary effects:
- It provides your audience with value, reinforcing their decision to sign up for your email list. If they’re not already one of your customers, this increases the likelihood that they’ll become one. After all, you’ve already provided them with something they can use for signing up for your email list. They’ll only want to explore what other kinds of value they can get from visiting your website or contacting you.
- It positions you as a thought leader within your specific industry or sector. By demonstrating that you’re an expert in your field, you clearly show that you’re an authority figure. Customers prefer to buy from someone they consider to be knowledgeable and trustworthy.
2. Customer Testimonials
Recording a series of customer testimonials can also be a powerful way to show your new customers how satisfied your past and/or current customers have been with your service.
New customers don’t like taking chances. When they buy a product or service, they like doing so confident in the knowledge that they’ll get what they pay for and more.
Customer testimonial videos provide new customers with that evidence. They’ll be able to hear directly from your existing customers just how satisfied they are with your product. This is a more powerful way to display testimonials. Quoting customers is fine, but there’s nothing quite like hearing it directly from their mouths and being able to see their reactions when they talk about the success they had in working with your company.
One word of advice: don’t script their responses. Let your customers speak genuinely and off-the-cuff so their words don’t sound stilted and forced. It will feel more genuine to the potential customer you’re trying to persuade.
3. Product & Service Demonstrations
There’s a famous saying from the world of literature: “Show, don’t tell.”
This advice could just as easily apply to the videos you include in your email marketing.
Recording a product demonstration is an effective way to prove the value and utility of what you’re offering the customer. It taps into the same line of thinking that applies to your customer testimonials, only instead of speaking with your happy customers, you show someone actually using the product or service successfully to prove that it works.
A demonstration is a powerful piece of visual evidence that leaves no doubt whether your great claims about your product are accurate. It allows your new customer to see for themselves.
4. Drive Traffic to Your Website
You can also use the videos included in your emails to drive traffic to your website.
It’s common for email marketers to embed YouTube videos in their emails. The issue with this is that when clicking the email, you’re sending users to your YouTube channel versus your website.
You want to use videos in your emails that link directly your website, driving traffic to specific landing pages that are relevant to the email message and that feature the video. While it’s great to get views on your YouTube channel, it’s better to have users land on your website. This is closer to where they can learn more about your company and hopefully make a purchase of your product or service.
5. Personalize Messages
Perhaps you’d like to reach out to a segmented portion of your email list with a customized message tailored to the characteristics or behavior of that select portion of your audience. This is where a custom-made video – intended only for a segment of your larger group – can work wonders. You can create customized videos that speak only to that part of your audience, highlighting the information you’d like only them to know.
6. Increase Webinar or Event Registration
If you have an upcoming event or webinar, filming a short teaser video for it can help drive up registration and, in turn, attendance. Embedding this video in one of your emails can help you promote it to your target audience included on your email list.
Your video can include the following information:
- The date and time
- The location of the event
- The event’s key takeaways
- The event’s intended audience
- Instructions on how to register for the event
- Other information such as cost, worksheets needed, etc.
If it’s an event held in a physical location, you can include a video of the event space to make attendees coming in from out of town more familiar with the layout.
You can also include a short clip of any VIP attendees or keynote speakers who may be attending or presenting. This will help emphasize the value attendees will gain out of coming to the event and hopefully drive more people to sign up.
7. Humanize Post-event Follow Up
Once you’ve held an event, following up with a well-written thank you is a nice touch that many attendees will appreciate.
But what if your attendees received a video from your organization’s leadership, personally thanking them for coming?
There’s nothing quite as poignant or human as hearing another person say “thank you,” and recording a video allows you to do that. It humanizes your post-event follow up in a way that a text-based email message just can’t quite capture.
8. Celebrate Important Business Relationships
Perhaps you have a customer or client you’ve been doing business with for a decade. What better way to commemorate your ten years of business than with an expertly crafted video showing your appreciation for them as a longstanding customer?
Videos take time, effort, and thought. Delight your customers by investing a bit of time and energy into making them feel special. Show them that you value your business relationship. You never know when a referral might come your way.
Celebrating client anniversaries can double as both a recognition of their patronage as well as a customer testimonial. By interviewing the customer while showing your appreciation, you can also capture them expressing their positive reflections on your business relationship. It’s a win-win.
Utilizing video in email is much more common than it used to be, but it is still rare enough that it adds an extra layer of value to any marketing message. Video content is perceived as professional, intuitive, and trustworthy and can motivate people to take action. Consider adding a video or two to your next marketing outreach and implementing a few of these innovative tactics.
