Email as we know it was born in the mid-1990s and, surprisingly, continues to be one of the most effective and prominent ways companies can spread their promotional messages now, even more than 20 years later. Yes, the days of AOL discs and dial-up have mostly come and gone, but email is still here, fighting the good fight and reaching more inboxes today than ever before.
Its long track record and continued success means if you want to reach your target audience, email still needs to be one of your primary communication methods at every step of your marketing initiatives.
But how can you use email to reach your audience throughout their buyer’s journey? What tools are at your disposal to make your message more memorable to that audience? How can you make sure your email stands out from the rest?
One way? Video!
Video is not just an important part of your marketing plan overall, but including video in your email strategy is crucial if you want to increase your open rates, click-through rates, engagement metrics, and more.
Today, we’re showing you how to boost your email marketing strategy with video, catering to every stage of the buyer’s journey and helping your brand stay top of mind for your consumers.
A Quick Note
Including video in your email strategy is a must, but there are certain technical obstacles to be aware of. Most email clients don’t allow video to play natively, so you’ll have to use a bit of a workaround: embed a video screen capture or gif in the body of your email with a play button superimposed over it. That will make users click or tap on the “video,” which will lead them to a landing page on your website, or a video hosting platform, where they can watch the video in full.
Let’s get started!
Stage 1: Brand Awareness
The goal of this stage is to inform your target audience they have a problem that needs solving, and that your company can help them solve it. In this stage, you’ve likely sent emails introducing your brand, promoting special limited time deals, or sharing newsletters to help keep your brand top of mind.
Because of the introductory nature of this stage, including video in your emails is one of the easiest ways to make your brand stand out from the rest. Just including the word “Video” in your subject line can increase your email open rates by 7 percent, and including video in the body of your email can increase click-through rate by as much as 200 to 300 percent.
Here are a few of the types of videos you can use in your awareness stage emails to keep users moving through the marketing funnel and toward a sale.
Commercials or Brand Videos – These videos introduce your brand or product to your audience, specifically showcasing your brand story and the benefits of picking you over the competition.
Educational Videos – Is there a topic related to your industry that could use deeper explaining? Use an educational video to educate your audience and highlight you as a thought leader.
Social Content Videos – These videos are short, bite-sized snippets of content that can be fun, educational, or otherwise memorable. They’re meant to generate buzz and keep your name top of mind.
Stage 2: Brand Consideration
Here, your users are familiar with the problem they face and with your company, but aren’t quite ready just yet to make a purchase. They’re still in the learning phase, researching products and solutions, and comparing features and offerings.
That’s why it’s crucial here to use video in your email marketing campaigns. These videos should help convince users to go with you instead of the competition, and provide the proof they need to support their opinion – so you want to make sure this video content shows you off in the best light!
Here are some of the best types of videos to feature in your email campaigns for users in the consideration stage of the funnel.
Product Videos – These videos highlight the specific benefits of one of your company’s products or services. Because users are already familiar with your brand, these videos focus on your brand’s products and product features.
Day in the Life Videos – Highlight the day-to-day routine of a happy customer or of your company’s founder. This personifies your brand and introduces users to key company players.
Tips and Tricks – Show your users tips and tricks unique to your product, product category, company, or industry. This content should be fun, engaging, and entertaining.
Stage 3: Purchase Decision
If your users have made it this far down the funnel, congratulations! Your emails and marketing efforts are doing a fantastic job of moving people toward purchase. Video could be the final key that locks in your sale.
And at this stage, your users are finally ready to make their buying decision. They’ve researched their options, they know their budget, and they just need one final push to convert. Why not help convince them by using video in a dedicated email blast?
Ninety percent of users report that product videos are helpful in the decision process of the buyer’s journey. Because email is such an easy way to disseminate your message, use it to get your video out to exactly the right people.
Use these types of video to reach your target audience in this final stage of the marketing funnel.
Testimonial Videos – Find one of your most ardent supporters and ask them to participate in a testimonial video. These videos should be authentic, sincere, and full of positive praise about your brand and your product.
Product Reviews – These videos feature a positive product review from someone totally unassociated with your company. As an outsider with no stakes in your success, their opinion is more powerful and convincing than anything you could create yourself.
Before and After Videos – One of your most powerful tools, before and after videos show the power of your product or service in a visual way, highlighting before and after results.
Conclusion
Video alone is a great tool. Email alone, also a great tool. But together, their power really shines, helping optimize the performance of both at once. So don’t wait! Find the perfect video production company to create your video and then partner with the experts at Uplers to create and launch an email marketing campaign that’ll bring you better results.
Author’s Bio
Hope Horner
Founder, CEO at Lemonlight
Hope Horner is a three-time entrepreneur that has been featured in Inc.’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2017, Entrepreneur’s 11 Marketing Experts that Could Change Your Business, and Pepperdine’s 40 Under 40. Horner is a regular contributor at Entrepreneur, Forbes, Inc., and multiple other publications where she shares startup insights and scalable solutions. She is currently working on her third startup, Lemonlight, an LA-based business that produces and distributes branded video content at scale.