The Definitive Guide to Video Email

If your goal is to send video emails, look no further. This blog serves as a comprehensive guide covering everything you need to know about video email.

Embedding Videos in Email

Often times the goal is to embed videos directly into emails. However, there a couple of limitations to doing this. These limitations make it so that directly embedding videos into emails is often not the best option.

1. Most Email Clients do not allow videos to play directly within an email
In order for a video to play directly within an email, the email client must support HTML5. If the email client does not support HMTL5 the video will show up as a still image. Even if the email client you are using allows you to embed a video into the email there is no guarantee that the recipient will be using the same email client and no guarantee they will be able to watch the video in the email.

2. Strict limitations to the size of files in emails 
Most email clients have a limitation as to how much data the email can contain. This is typically not more than 25Mb. A 30-second video recorded at 720p  (most newer Mac and PC webcams record in 720p) is over 30MB and therefore could not be attached to an email. If you use a newer smartphone to record video it will likely be in 1080p HD which would result in just a few seconds of video to total 25MB. So the only way to attach a longer video to an email would be to greatly reduce the quality of the video, which is not something that is recommended.

Then how do you send video emails?

It turns out there are some creative ways to circumvent the aforementioned limitations. Instead of attaching the entire video in the email itself, the industry-standard has become to attach a preview of the video and a link to a website where the entire video will play.

Types of Previews

Thumbnails
There are several different types of previews you can use to send a video email. The most common method is to use what is called a thumbnail, or a still image. This is often just a single frame from the video itself. Or sometimes a custom thumbnail, an image separate from the video itself, can be used.
GIFs
A GIF is a type of file that displays a number of images in order to make the appearance of video. GIFs are a much more attention-grabbing method of attaching a preview to a video email. It does require the additional step of generating the GIF from the video but a few video softwares, like dubb.com, do this automatically.
Gif in video email

What about the website where the video plays?

You will need a website to host your videos so when the video email. People often choose to use Youtube to host their videos, mostly because Youtube is free. However, if your goal is to use video email for business, Youtube is not the best option. Directing people to a Youtube video has several drawbacks.

    1. The person will be subjected to advertisements and other content, some of which will likely be directly competing with your video. You want the recipients of your videos full attention, something you cannot achieve with Youtube.
    2. Detailed tracking for your videos will not be available. You will not be able to see who watched your video, only how many times it was watched. When you are sending someone a video for business, it is crucial to know whether that person has watched the video or not.
    3. You will have far fewer branding opportunities. Certain video hosting platforms, like dubb.com, allows you to automatically generate websites for each video you create. It also allows you to brand every part of your video and the page it is hosted on. You can customize things like URLs, the video player itself, you can add logos and themes to the pages. You can build the entire video page, often called a landing page, to fit your needs.

Wrapping it all up

The fastest, most effective way to send video email is by using software like dubb.com. The software does all the heavy lifting and doesn’t require any technical skill, and allows anyone to perform very technical procedures. Things like recording your screen with a webcam feed of yourself, creating hyperlinked animated GIFS, automatically generating custom landing pages, and of course sending engaging videos through email are all made super simple by the software provided by dubb.com. Best of all there is a free version!

If you are interested in sending video email, Dubb provides a fully integrated solution. Request an invite to get started. dubb.com