Companies have been crafting email marketing campaigns aimed at local and international markets with great success for a long time now. One of the main reasons that strategy remains relevant after so long is how well it pairs with video content.
Combining email marketing’s potential reach with video content’s widespread appeal is a no-brainer. But that doesn’t mean that just adding any video to an email campaign will magically make it better.
After all, we’re talking about effectively synergizing your email campaigns with your video marketing content, and this process requires an experienced team.
So today, we’ll go over some crucial tips to improve your email marketing campaigns using video and provide some practical advice to get you started.
Let’s get to it, shall we?
Why Video and Email Marketing Work so Well Together
Email and video work together because they provide customers with a friendly and effective way to get to know and experience a brand. And most importantly, they respect the client’s need to establish a business conversation with the brand on their terms.
People like to feel they’re establishing a link or social bond with other people, or even brands, before spending their time or money on a product. Combining email marketing and video content gives you a perfect platform to nurture those interactions.
This conversation or set of interactions is called the customer journey, which we will discuss in the next section.
The Customer Journey and Video Email Campaigns
In a nutshell, the customer journey (aka buyer’s journey) is a framework that reflects what interactions take place between you and your customer while they make a purchase. Solid data on customer insights and trends provide the basis of the customer journey. The framework itself describes the series of steps customers take throughout their buying cycle.
You should get acquainted with the customer journey concept before moving forward, as you’ll want your video-powered email campaign to adapt to this customer journey to improve its performance by:
- Helping you define how your campaigns raise awareness or aid the customer purchase your products.
- Describing your touchpoints and goals at each stage of the interaction.
- Keeping you focused on how you reach the customer at every step.
- Helping you measure performance so you can iterate and improve your strategy.
The customer journey lets you organize the type of emails and videos you need to share with your customers based on their needs at each stage of the interaction. That way, you can create content focused on the client’s wants and needs at every customer-brand interaction.
If you’re new to inbound marketing, please enjoy this 3-minute intro video.
For our purposes today, we’ll divide the customer journey into two stages: recognition-awareness and consideration-purchasing. Let’s see how it all comes together using video email marketing.
Video Email Campaigns During the Recognition-awareness Stage
When you use email as an outreach tool, you’re entering a conversation with your future client, not just making a written equivalent of a sales call.
Think about it; your customer is getting to know you, so you start sharing social information about your company’s culture and community first. You don’t start with offers and sales campaigns right away, at least not at this beginning stage, and not if the customer isn’t warm to that kind of content.
Starting slowly at this stage of the process and getting potential customers familiar with your brand and products is your best bet.
To get things moving, there are a few video types you can put to use here that will perform better than others:
- Testimonials
- Day to day activities
- Manufacturing or operational processes video
- Videos that showcase your business history and cultural background
- Awards won by the company
- Trailers, shorts, and reels
These videos excel at building awareness and keeping customers engaged. They help customers get acquainted with your brand and your products without feeling too overtly promotional.
Last but not least, as most video production companies recommend, consider that shorter animated videos should be all you focus on. Make your videos brief and to the point and keep them between 60 seconds and 2 minutes, as these tend to have more engagement overall.
Video Email Campaigns During the Consideration-purchasing Stage
Once they move into the consideration-purchasing stage, the customers know what they want and need to find the right solution to their problems. So, you need to move your customer from considering your offer or product into a conversion or a buy.
A mix of social proof, authority building, and the right offer works best at this point. Videos that excel at such marketing goals are:
- Explainers
- Product trailers
- News about webinars and upcoming seminars
- Innovations and new products
- New opportunities
- Discounts and promotions
At this stage of the journey, your customers expect a different type of content than before.
Now you get to move to more overtly promotional content — videos built around your products and offerings, in email campaigns meant to prompt audiences into action. And given that you are now targeting an audience primed for conversion, it’ll be far more likely they’ll do so.
Setting up Your First Your First Video Email Marketing Campaign: Where To Start?
So far, we’ve given you a 10.000 ft view of how these marketing strategies can (and should) work together, which is necessary for you to know how to structure your campaign.
Now, we’ll focus on two types of video that will improve your email marketing campaign’s performance in both stages of the customer journey we’ve covered, which should give you a great place to start.
Testimonial Videos
Customers online enjoy forming communities and exchanging opinions. Moreover, potential customers getting ready for a conversion often respond to peer validation or insider knowledge.
That validation is why customers watch videos and read content built around other people’s experiences and thoughts. You can use a process called ‘social proof’ to build awareness and prove your brand is worthy of your client’s time and money.
Testimonials build upon that concept, with people sharing their opinions and perspective on something (often a product, brand, or the like.). Done right, they can become an awareness-generating powerhouse that gets people interested in your offers while building brand recognition and customer trust.
Some of the benefits of testimonial videos include:
- Improve brand recognition.
- Reach more people with your message.
- Start the conversation between your brand and your customer.
If done right, video testimonial emails can help you jump-start your marketing conversations with potential clients and even advance them to the latter stages of their journey.
Explainer Videos
An explainer is a video that shows how your product works. Explainer videos delve into the inner workings of a product and show how your clients can benefit from its use. They are usually 2 minutes long, practical, and show the product’s features in real-life situations.
Explainer videos keep your audience engaged by showing your client your solution’s more remarkable features, benefits, and advantages. All that takes place in a short and entertaining two minutes video you can share with your customer once she’s warm to your offers and promotions.
Here are some of the benefits of using explainer videos:
- They clearly define what your product does and how to use it.
- They give you another opportunity to boost your conversion rates.
- They’re an effective way to help close sales.
Explainer videos can boost your email-generated conversions by clearly telling people how your product works and what benefits it provides. Combined with the correct email strategy, they can improve conversion rates, and in the end, help you close more sales.
Practical Tips for Email and Video Campaigns
Before you go, we’d like to go over a few quick and practical tips to keep in mind when producing these types of videos for your email campaigns, divided into three sections: video production, social marketing and delivery, and content writing.
As you work on your strategy, these should prove useful and help make the process more manageable and improve your results.
Video Production and implementation:
- Vary the types of videos across your entire email strategy.
- Link to your video in your email using an image edited to look like a video player.
- Make sure to keep your videos’ quality on par with the image you want to project.
Social Marketing and Delivery:
- Make sure your videos align with your overall campaign strategy.
- Consider using videos that are only available to subscribers at first to improve conversions.
- Use your social media accounts to extend the reach of your video.
Content Writing:
- Use the tools of storytelling. Make sure your video has a clear three-act sequence.
- Use audience hooks through the entire video.
- Consider different newsletter placements for different types of videos.
- Include a solid call to action.
Parting Thoughts
By now, you know why email and video work so well together and how the customer journey can help you improve your video email campaigns at every customer-brand interaction. And that’s great!
Do keep in mind, though, that the types of videos we covered in-depth are but the start. You can combine email and video content into several strategies, all designed to pursue wildly different marketing objectives.
Hopefully, what you’ve learned today will help you get started and improve your email marketing campaign’s performance using video.
Put these tips to good use, and you won’t be disappointed!
by Ahoy
