How to Embed Videos in Outlook Emails

Have you been wondering how to embed videos in Outlook emails?

If so, you are in the right place. Outlook is one of the older email programs, yet it is one that is extremely widespread. If you are working at a large corporation (or even a smaller company), there is a good chance that you are sending and receiving emails through Outlook. 

Yet even if you are a pro Outlook user, you may not know how to actually embed videos in your Outlook emails. This may be a pertinent question whether you are trying to connect with a key prospect or simply want to send emails more quickly.

No matter the purpose, this article will help you unlock the power of email when you are completing your work on Outlook. From creating your video content to actually distributing it to your intended recipients, we are going to cover a lot of ground here.

Let’s jump into it!

Table of Contents

The Power of Video Emails

Is It Possible to Embed Videos in Outlook Emails?

Sending a Video in Outlook as an Attachment

A New Way of Sending Video Emails

A First Principle: Keep It Concise

How to Insert a Video into an Outlook Email using Dubb

Step 1: Find and Install Your Recording Tools

Step 2: Install the Dubb Outlook Add-In

Step 3: Log In To Your Dubb Account From the Add-In

Step 4: Insert Your Dubb Video Into the Body of the Email

The Platform for Your Video Email Marketing Needs

The Power of Video Emails

As you probably already know, Outlook is one of the original and robust email and contact platforms available. It is ubiquitous in today’s day and age. You can use Outlook on a PC or Mac. You can use it on your office computer or on your smartphone. Essentially, wherever you are, you can send and receive emails on a fantastic email platform.

In this post, we aren’t just talking about sending simple emails, however. We are going to talk about using videos in your day-to-day emails. 

Let’s face it: the modern inbox is noisier than ever. With the proliferation of emails, texts, and other ways to communicate, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get your emails noticed in a world of countless messages. 

Everyone’s trying to get everyone’s attention, and plain text emails are simply not enough to make you stand out in the crowd. Although plain text emails have worked in the past, competition has grown, and sticking to this traditional way of emailing is no longer going to cut it.

We were taught from a young age that we shouldn’t trust people we don’t know, and we’ve applied that same stranger danger principle to receiving emails. Especially with the increasing pervasiveness of spam and fraud, people are growing more and more distrustful of emails they receive from people outside their contact list.

The good news is that there’s a way to overcome this issue—embedding videos in the body of your emails. By adding eye-catching videos to the emails you send, you’re increasing the chances of your message being opened by your recipients, and not deleted before they’ve even had the chance to open it. In a sea of plain text messages, an email with a video attached has great potential to be opened and interacted with.

For instance, video is inherently appealing. Studies have shown that adding video to your email messages increases your click rates by 300%. In all likelihood, your audience is going to want to view your content in video form. 

It gets better. Video also helps your audience pay closer attention to your message. One peer-reviewed study found that people process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Just think about that for one second. It’s like looking at a photo of a building versus reading a description of that building. It is more memorable, and video offers you this opportunity to deliver a memorable message on virtually anything. 

I like to say it this way: while a picture may be worth one thousand words, video is worth a million bucks. 

Finally, video can save you time. If you’re new to video sales and marketing, it can be easy to think of video as some sort of grand production. You may think you need to invest in expensive equipment, develop a long script, and hire some expensive actors. In fact, video can be one of the cheapest and easiest ways to create content. All you need is your smartphone and an Internet connection. 

As far as time, you’ll often find that it is easier and quicker to simply speak to a camera than write a lengthy email. Instead of having to go back, correct your grammar, and edit your content, you can record a quick video and send your video email through Outlook.

Now, including videos in your emails has proven to be an effective way to break through walls of suspicion, but you might encounter a couple of setbacks in the process. Let’s get into it.

Is It Possible to Embed Videos in Outlook Emails?

The answer isn’t exactly a “yes,” nor is it a definite “no.”

You see, not all email clients allow sharing of videos that play directly within the body of an email. Outlook, in particular, does not support embedding videos in emails—at least, not anymore—primarily for security reasons. They discontinued support for video in email messages to prevent the spread of malware. Along with this, the platform is also not HTML5 compatible.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, HTML5 is a video element that has widely replaced the older (and now discontinued) Adobe Flash Player plugin. The HTML5 video element allows the browser to pull and load a video from a specific source or different platform, which means that a recipient could play a video directly from their email client—that is, as long as it has HTML5 capabilities.

Apart from Outlook, most email service providers, including Gmail and Yahoo, are not HTML5 enabled. But all hope isn’t lost, because this still leaves us with two other ways of sharing videos in Outlook emails.

Sending a Video in Outlook as an Attachment

So let’s address this question of how to embed videos in Outlook emails. 

The first method would be to send the video as an attachment, which seems like a fairly simple solution. However, Outlook has a 20-megabyte (MB) limitation on file sizes. This is an extremely small file size—a one-minute video that’s in 720p at 30 frames per second is approximately 60 MB. If you attempt to send a video file that exceeds the 20 MB limit, you might receive an error message and Outlook might ask you to upload the file to your OneDrive cloud instead.

Even if your file doesn’t exceed the size limit, your recipient still needs to download the file. This might not seem like a problem, but it has its downsides. This method can prove futile, considering we are inclined to not download attachments from people we don’t recognize. It’s also risky on your part because having an attachment in your email increases the likelihood that your message will not reach your recipient and instead end up in their spam or junk folders.

So we’ve established that embedding videos using HTML5 isn’t going to work, and neither is sending video files as attachments. So what can we do?

A New Way of Sending Video Emails

One of the ideal ways to embed videos in your Outlook email messages would be to use software such as Dubb. Dubb is a video communication platform that enables you to record and host actionable, trackable videos using your smartphone, laptop, or desktop computer. It also lets you share videos in emails with the click of a button.

Instead of attaching a video to an email, you can do something that is more engaging for your audience members and more effective in generating a conversion. It is essentially a two step process.

The first step involves GIFs. After you have created your video and are ready to send it to your audience, you can use a tool like Dubb to create a three second animated GIF. This animated GIF gives a quick preview of what your video is about. Because it is so visual in nature, it entices your audience members to click on the GIF to watch the actual video.

And don’t worry: while the three second GIF defaults to the first three seconds of your video, you can use a tool like Dubb to clip a three second clip that will most attract your audience members to your video. Ultimately, you can customize your GIF how you like. For instance, you can hold up a whiteboard that contains a specific audience member’s name. If you clip a GIF of that image, you will definitely be on your way to increasing your open rate.

So as I mentioned, this is a two step process. You may be wondering: what happens when the audience member clips on the animated GIF? Ultimately, that audience member is taken to something called a video landing page.

You can think of video landing pages as central hubs for each of your videos. If you use a tool like Dubb, each of your videos will have its own separate video landing page. Better yet, they are automatically generated.

Video landing pages are so powerful because they can help you convert your email audience members into paying customers. Within the Dubb ecosystem, you can customize your video landing pages in so many different ways. As a starting point, you can include your custom branding on every page (including your logo and font colors). But beyond that, you can include calls to action below your video.

Calls to action are extremely powerful. They essentially lead audience members from point A to point B. On Dubb, you can leverage so many different calls to action below your videos. They include things like:

• Schedule a call: This is a great call to action for people who are just hearing about your company. Once they open up your Outlook message and watch your video, they can easily schedule a call on your calendar. Dubb offers integrations with some of the most popular scheduling software (including Calendly), so it is extremely easy to set up. Just think: you can get pre-qualified leads on your calendar while you are sleeping. Pretty awesome, right? 

• Download an eBook or white paper: In some cases, you may have a lead magnet (like a digital asset) that you want to share with prospects. If so, you may want to share that lead magnet with viewers of your video emails. When the audience member clicks on the lead magnet, you can offer it to them for free if they offer some basic information (like their name, title, and email address). This is a great way to both nurture your audience members and show the value of your product, service, and/or company. 

• Reply with video: This is one of our favorite calls to action. Here, you are letting your audience members respond to your video with a video of their own. This is valuable in several different ways. For starters, it can be more convenient than typing out a long email. But more than that, it lets you gather video testimonials, which are outstanding ways to display social proof. I’d recommend that you include the reply with video call to action below many of your Outlook video emails.

• Visit a website: This is a multi-versatile call to action option that you can use in many different situations. Essentially, you can plug in any website into a call to action button. It makes it easy for you to refer your viewers to your homepage, a blog post that you have written, or something else. 

• Make a purchase: Finally, this is a call to action option that all of us can appreciate. You can program a button to lead your audience member to a purchase page. Now, you’ll probably want to focus this option on those audience members who are toward the bottom of your sales funnel. That said, it can be an option if you think that it is appropriate.

These are just some of the call to action options that you have at your disposal. The bottom line? You have plenty of options to nurture your audience members and convince them to purchase your product or service. While it may not happen right away, calls to action substantially increase your odds of reaching your goals.

So what does this all mean? Through both animated GIFs and video landing pages, you can create a compelling experience when sending a video in an Outlook email. This is true whether you are speaking to a prospect for the first time or are trying to convert a very interested prospect into a paying customer. 

A First Principle: Keep It Concise

Before we discuss how to embed videos into an Outlook email by using Dubb, I want to spend just one moment sharing a creation tip. There are so many different things to keep in mind when you are creating videos. Whether you are sharing them through Outlook or some other medium, you need to be strategic when you are making your video content.

That said, I think one of the most important things to remember is this: keep your videos concise. Sure, you will want to start with a hook, provide value points, social proof, and some sort of call to action so that the person can take the next step (more on calls to action in a moment). This is a lot, so it can be tempting to make longer videos than you would expect.

I urge you to resist this temptation. As a general rule of thumb, the more concise the video, the better. This is for several reasons.

First, your audience’s attention span is probably limited. Just think about your average day. In all likelihood, you are juggling many different tasks and responsibilities in your personal and professional lives. Sitting down to watch a long sales video is probably going to go to the bottom of your to-do list. The same is true for your audience. You need to recognize that they are busy with their lives, so it’s in your interest to get to the point.

Along with this, keeping your video concise forces you to trim the fat. It makes your video better because you are only including the essentials. While this may be a painful exercise as you are planning and recording your video, the end result is a much cleaner, better, and more effective video.

So how long is too long? I would probably say that a 30-second video is probably fine. 10 minutes, however, is virtually impossible. You have to use your best judgment here. If you are deciding between two different lengths of time, however, it’s probably best to go with the shorter length of time.

Ultimately, I encourage you to keep all of this in mind as you are making your video content. You’ll thank yourself later. 

How to Insert a Video into an Outlook Email using Dubb

The great news is that it is extremely easy to embed videos in Outlook emails. All you have to do is set up your Dubb account (and Outlook inbox) through the following steps. 

Step 1: Find and Install Your Recording Tools

To begin, you will need to think about how you are going to capture your video. There are several ways to do this with Dubb. 

For starters, you can capture video using the Dubb Chrome extension. The Dubb Chrome extension is extremely powerful, as it lets you both record videos and easily find videos in your library. All you need to do is install the extension, open Chrome, and click on the Dubb icon. From there, you can record from your computer’s webcam, make a screen recording, search through your Dubb library, and more.

The screen recording option is especially compelling. As you would probably assume, a screen recording is a video taken of your laptop or desktop screen. Screen recordings are especially useful resources if you need to visually show something to your audience members. For instance, if you are showing off a digital product or are trying to create a FAQ video for your product or service, you can get the job done with a screen recording. These aren’t the only use cases, however, so I encourage you to experiment with screen recordings as you see fit. 

You also have the option of using the Dubb desktop app and the Dubb mobile app. These apps let you create all kinds of video content—wherever you are. Even better, you don’t need to be a professional videographer or video producer to create compelling content for your audience members. All you need to do is open up the Dubb desktop or mobile app, start recording, make any small edits as necessary, and then follow the steps below. From recording selfie videos in your car to more polished videos at your desk, both of these Dubb apps can help you get the job done. 

Also, you may have already created a video that you want to send through Outlook. If so, there’s no problem. If you have an MP4 file or MOV file, you can simply upload your video through the Chrome extension, desktop app, or mobile app. As I mentioned above, however, the key is not to attach your video to your Outlook email. Doing so can lead to a whole host of problems—most notably the fact that your video email probably won’t reach your intended audience members. 

Once you have done all of this, you can move on to step two. 

Step 2: Install the Dubb Outlook Add-In

Along with creating your video through the apps above, there is one more thing that you will need to install. Specifically, you’ll need to download the Dubb Outlook add-in from the Microsoft Store. 

For a more detailed walkthrough on how to install the add-in, check out this support article. Keep in mind, however, that if you’re using a corporate Outlook account, you may need to ask for permission first in order to install it. Once you get that permission, go ahead and install the add-in. 

Also, there is a key caveat here. The Dubb Outlook add-in is only available for Outlook 365. If you don’t have Outlook 365, you won’t be able to use the add-in. Just keep this in mind as you are reading this post and getting prepared to embed videos in your Outlook emails. 

Step 3: Log In To Your Dubb Account From the Add-In

Once you have installed everything you need, you will want to click on the new mail button to start creating a new message. You can access the Dubb add-in by clicking the three-dot menu on the email toolbar. 

Here’s a helpful tip that can make your life easier. I suggest pinning the Dubb Outlook add-in to your toolbar so that it’s easily visible whenever you’re composing a message. To do this, navigate to the Settings panel, go to Customize actions under Mail, tick the box that corresponds to Dubb, and finally click Save.

After pinning the add-in, proceed to log in to your Dubb account by clicking the Dubb icon. Next, you will want to click on the Dubb Outlook add-in, which will give you access to your entire library of videos. You’ll also be able to create a new video if you’d like. 

Step 4: Insert Your Dubb Video Into the Body of the Email

No matter the duration or size of your Dubb videos, you can instantly insert them into the body of the email. Just click on whichever video you wish to send. You will then be prompted to decide whether you wish to add the contact’s email address for activity reporting. 

If you choose to add the contact’s email address, Dubb will track every bit of engagement that your video receives for you. This means you’ll know if your contact clicks on your video message, whether they watch the video, how much of it they actually watched, and various other data such as click rates. 

This type of data is extremely powerful. It lets you see how individuals are actually engaging with your emails and your video content. With this information, you can more effectively follow up with your audience members. If, for instance, you see that an audience member watched the entirety of one of your videos, you may want to follow up with them by touching on points you made in that video. If that same prospect only watched some of that video, however, you may want to dig a little deeper.

There is more art than science to this. With that said, I highly encourage you to enable tracking for your Outlook video emails. You’ll be receiving priceless data that you can then use to more effectively engage with your audience members. 

Now, let’s talk about personalization text. The share your video prompt also allows you the opportunity to add personalization text to your video email. A simple “Hi [first name]!” can go a long way. It lets your recipients know that the message is made just for them. It shows that your recipient isn’t just a number within a much larger group. While it may not seem like much on the surface, personalization text can be another tool in your toolkit that you can use to build stronger relationships with your audience members. 

Once you click on “Insert Video,” Dubb will automatically generate an animated GIF preview of the first three seconds of your video. Like I mentioned above, this makes for a much more engaging experience for the recipient, compared to seeing a plain image thumbnail.

Adding videos to your emails using Dubb doesn’t give you any error messages on attachment size limitation. It won’t require your contacts to download anything either. All they need to do is click on your video and they’ll be redirected to your video landing page. And as a reminder: you can fully customize your Dubb video landing page so that it’s complete with your logo, call to action buttons, and everything else that has to do with your branding. All of this power is in your hands. 

The Platform for Your Video Email Marketing Needs

We have seen the power of video emails when you are communicating with others in Outlook. Once these people make video emails part of their daily flow, they start to see extremely interesting results. Most notably, they start to build stronger relationships with others. In certain situations, some of those relationships turn into paying customers. It isn’t a guarantee, but you are in a much better position than if you would send the same email but in text form.

As is always the case, make sure that you are leading with value. Create compelling video content that your Outlook audience will want to open. If you do this, you will be in excellent shape. 

Even better, it is extremely easy to embed videos in Outlook emails. Because of this, I’d encourage you to check out Dubb. Using Dubb is one of the best and most secure ways to share videos through Outlook—especially for developing your business, prospecting, winning new business, or marketing. I’m confident that you will see the value here.

I hope I have thoroughly answered this question on how to embed videos in Outlook emails. If you would like to learn more about Dubb, you can check out some features by clicking here. And if you’d like to test it out, consider signing up for a free trial—no credit card required. You can sign up by clicking here.