When we think of video marketing strategy, it is easy to simply settle on one basic strategy. We post our videos to our website, our social media channels, interact with our audience, and then we’re done. This is the “standard” way of doing things. Some businesses are successful with this basic strategy.

Nevertheless, I invite you to add one more layer to your digital marketing strategy. I am specifically talking about leveraging video email. By including video in your email marketing strategy, you can take advantage of yet another effective opportunity to connect with your audience.   

Why Email is So Effective

Email is an extremely effective channel for your video marketing efforts for several important reasons. First, email is a sticky, longstanding technology that isn’t going away anytime soon. While all of the media buzz is around the popularity and stickiness of social media, studies show that 99 percent of email users check their inbox at least once per day. It may even be the first thing that you check in the morning. As a marketer, this is an extremely compelling habit that you will want to leverage.

Along with this, the true beauty of email can be summarized in one word—control. Your email list will never go away. You have total control over how you use your email list. Even though you may have some control over your Facebook or Twitter page, the fact remains that you are clients of that platform. Facebook or Twitter can suddenly change their algorithm and significantly impact the way that your audience discovers your content. With email, however, you never have to worry about an overarching power or company altering the way that you deliver your video content to your audience. 

Next, email is so effective because it is extremely easy to get started. While many businesses have a Facebook page or some sort of social media presence, even more businesses have an email list—no matter how small. In other words, you aren’t starting from scratch here. Whether you manage your email list through MailChimp, Mailerlite, or some other email marketing software, you have an established base of readers that may be interested in your video content.

Within email marketing software, you also have the ability to segment your audience. You may have done so already. Email segmentation can be extremely powerful because you can deliver more relevant, targeted content to the members of your audience. An audience member completing a certain call to action to sign up for future emails, for instance, can receive targeted video content that is related to the initial content that prompted them to follow your company. 

These are just some benefits, but the fact remains that email should be a critical component of your video marketing strategy. It gives you the power and flexibility to share your content with an audience that is constantly tuned in.

That said, there is a key caveat here. There is no real way to send a playable video directly inside of an email. Gmail, for example, takes YouTube links and sometimes displays a thumbnail in the body of your message. The user would still have to click the video, however, to actually view it. While there are some ways to get around this—most notably, through Dubb’s Chrome Extension and Dubb Outlook Add-In—sending a video through email is slightly more complicated than you might think.

Using Video Email as Part of Marketing Strategy

From understanding the importance of email in your video marketing strategy, you should next understand some tactics so that you can effectively use email within your strategy. Like SEO and social media, there isn’t an overarching playbook that will guarantee success. However, there are some first principles and key tenants that I discovered at Dubb which will help you shape your own strategy.

Never Attach Videos to Emails

First, you never want to attach a video to an email. This is a poor practice for a number of reasons, but most notably because video files are heavy. If you are sending a heavy email to a lengthy email list, you will inevitably encounter some difficulties. Some of your recipients’ email systems may even block your message. Even if your message does go through, a skeptical recipient may choose not to download your video out of fear of a potential virus. 

To avoid all of these problems, resist this temptation to send your video content as an attachment to an email. Instead, choose to either insert a link to your video or use a tool like Dubb’s Chrome Extension to embed a video.

Segment Your Audience

From declining to attach a video to an email, I next want to talk about that awesome benefit of sending video emails. That is segmentation. Regardless of the size of your business or your familiarity with video marketing, it is in your interest to segment your audience and deliver relevant video content to them. 

If you have already taken advantage of segmentation, your job is much easier. Understanding how certain audience members joined your list, you can serve relevant content to them. As just one example, if you sold a particular product and obtained that customer’s email address during the transaction, you can send that customer videos on how to get the most out of that product. If a prospective customer gave you their email address after viewing an introductory marketing video, think about sending them additional videos that further explain the product. As you can tell, this idea reinforces the need to appeal to different segments of your marketing funnel. The beauty of sending video emails is that segmentation is inherent within nearly every email marketing software. 

If you have started to collect emails but haven’t yet segmented your list, all hope isn’t lost. Yes, you can go back and manually segment your list, depending on how your list members signed up. Whether you do that or not, however, you need to set up automatic segmentation for your list. For example, when you create a landing page for a new product or service, automatically segment out those individuals who respond to your call to action. From there, you will have a list of interested prospects that can receive video emails about the product. 

You can make segmentation as basic or elaborate as you like. Having said this, I definitely encourage you to take advantage of this feature.  

Leverage Text-Based Features of Email

With video email, you also want to leverage the text-based features of email. Compared to some of the other distribution methods outlined in this book, email offers extreme personalization to the end-user. To do this, you will need to edit both your signup forms and the text within your emails. 

In your call to action signup forms, you may want to ask the user for their first name, last name, gender, and even potential interests. With that information in hand, you can use wildcards to include that user’s submitted information in the particular email that they receive. This is an easy, yet effective way to build rapport with your list members.  

Along with this, video emails let you leverage text and video in a unique way. If you are posting your video content to Twitter, for example, you can only include 280 characters in the text accompanying your video. 280 characters may not be enough to provide additional context for your video or further explain a certain topic. 

You don’t have this problem with email. While I don’t recommend it, you could theoretically write as much as you want about your embedded video. Essentially, you have a great opportunity to further explain the video, show off your personality, and even include another call to action that can move your prospect down your marketing funnel. Your creativity is your only limit here, so think hard about how you can use the text component of video email to further accomplish your video marketing goals.

Another Tool in Your Toolkit

Video email can be a simple, yet effective component of your video marketing strategy. Regardless of your audience, you can be sure that they are constantly checking their email. By delivering high-quality, targeted video email in their inbox, they will certainly be more likely to make a purchase from you.

If you are looking for tools to help you with your video email strategy, I invite you to check out the Dubb Chrome Extension and Dubb Outlook Add-In. These extensions are completely free to use. Some of the features that you can leverage include automatic animated gifs for each email, personalized text above the video preview, and an easy-to-use dashboard that provides a wealth of analytics about your emails. With this data in hand, you can create better performing video emails. In other words, you can change what isn’t working and double down on what is working. 

Ultimately, we at Dubb designed these extensions in order to make it extremely easy to send video emails. Whether you choose to use these free tools or not, video email can be your secret weapon. Used effectively, it can separate you from competitors. But most of all, video email will help you build an even closer relationship with your audience. 

If you are looking for an all-in-one video marketing solution, consider getting a free trial on Dubb.