I know the concept of video email is quite new. Certainly providing links to videos on emails is becoming common, and many marketers do that. So why not take the next step?
What You Can and Cannot Do.
First, right now, embedding a video in an email is not possible. One day it might happen, but right now email servers don’t have the necessary software for this. This means text links or graphics.
Research suggests that using a graphical representation of your video and then providing a direct link to the video email is the best way to achieve video emailing right now.
The Case For Video Emails.
In an article by Mark Brownlow, “Video email: current practices”, he discusses the research on video emailing. There are some interesting statistics.
Looking at this statistic, it is obvious that video is now acceptable to most internet viewers. “According to comScore, US Internet users viewed 14.8 billion online videos in January, with YouTube alone scoring over 100 million unique viewers in that same period”. Finally video has come of age, and we are all conditioned to use it.
Comparing emails with or without a video link, “When not linking to video his click through rate is between 20-27%…when linking to online video it’s consistently between 51-65%” Anna Yeaman. We know that a video link receives a much better open rate than a simple text message.
With an image in the email, views are 5-10 times as many!
Campaign Monitor reported that: “…the screen grab was clicked on more than 5 times as often as the text link.” Mark Brownlow says of his own email campaigns,
“In my own newsletters, a video image attracts between two and ten times the clicks that the accompanying text link gets”.
Do you get this? If you have a properly constructed image in your email, 5-10 times more people will click on the link and view your video. If you are in sales, information dissemination, advertising what would you p[ay to have 5-10 times more people view your message?
Direct Video Or Video With A Link.
When considering video email, there are three possibilities;
- A text Link
- A Video Thumbnail
- The video plays within the email.
Video Text Link
We are all familiar with text links pointing to videos. These are common in emails now. The challenge is that the link is usually a bunch of numbers a meaningless symbols and not very sexy! The author puts a catchy headline in there to entice you to click. Now you get about double click through rates when you direct your emails to a video, so it is pretty good compared to sending them to a text blog entry for instance.
Video Thumbnail
This is an illustration of an attractive video email thumbnail. It was produced with Talk Fusion. When using a video thumbnail like this, the research suggests a 5-10 times better response than a standard text link! This is huge.
It is not intrusive, as you only see the video if you click on the link. We believe this is the best way to use video email right now, and the research backs us up. Compared to an email with a simple text link to a blog post, you are likely to see a 10-20 times greater open rate. This is phenomenal
Video Within The Email
There are programs around now that will send an email with a video in it. While this seems great, imagine receiving 20 emails and every time you click on one a video starts paying! I think this is intrusive, and many are likely to get angry at invasion of their personal space.
Because of this in your face aspect, I would suggest that the nest form of video email now and into the future will be the thumbnail version, where with the click of a mouse a high quality video plays seamlessly.
What Video Email Service Should You Use?
I think by now you can see why I am so excited by the concept of video email. It is exciting, new and I believe in the same space as TV was when it first appeared. Right now video emails are not that common. This means sending a message this way is very likely to get opened. As people become more familiar with the technology, expect even better response to video emails, and reduced openings of more traditional text links.
After I was Introduced to Video Email, I did my homework to see what was available.
ComF5
Formerly hello, hello, this has been around for a while. The cost is $39.95 for up to 5,000 email addresses and bandwidth is limited to 40Gb. There is no commission payable at this level and to earn residual income you need to pay $99.95 a month.
As you can see from the thumbnail provided, their video templates are fairly ordinary and in my opinon, unatractive.
Deliverability is fine. There is no mention of an autoresponder.
EyeJot
This is a FREE service if you want to send videos less than 1 minute long. You can upgrade to a 5 minute service for $99.95 a year with tracking. No referral commissions are payable, and there are no autoresponders.
Once again, the actual video template is afairly ordinary and not eye catching. Nevertheless, for a free service providing you onnly want to send short messages to people yo know, it would be OK.
There is no video conferencing, and the basic service can’t be loaded onto youtube, etc.
Jive Systems
At $99.95 a month this is a premium service. You can have up to 60 minute videos, although I am not sure why you would have one that long on an email! There is a free trial, but you have to enter credit card information to do it.
There is no compensation plan but they appear to have good training. For most people this may be a litle expensive, but it appears to be onre of the better services.
They suggest the $99.95 price point is for a limited time to increase urgency.
Talk Fusion
This is the Email video platform I am using. This incorporates a very easy to use interface, enabling video emails to be on their way in less than 5 minutes from the first mouse click. The templates are great as can be seen from the thimbnail and they will even design a professional template like this with the Executive package.
They have a very professional web site and autoresponders and video conferencing. One great feature is the ability to put your videos on your blog, and social media sites. The autoresponer includes a cubscription form you can place on any website. Subscribers are automatically sent a pre established video and or text email message series. This is very effective in communicating with prospects or customers.
There is an affiliate plan and after an initial joining fee of $175 a month, your monthly spend is just $20 for up to 1,000 clients on your mailing list.
This product has recently had a makeover and features beautiful templates, high deliverability, ease of use, and a very nice feel. With so many video formats, the ablity to upload many formats seamlessly is very important.
One more thing, you can combine different video segments in the same email. For instance you could have a video introducing a customer to a new property for sale. This could be a personalised messag of 15-30 seconds. Then you immediately switch to the second video, a tour of the property you are offering. At the end you could splice in a third video with a call to action.
Video Email is the new emerging technology in video. Right now you can capitalise from this new wave. By referring others to the talk fusion service, you can not only pay for your own system, but receive an additional income stream for your business.
To find out more about Talk fusion, go to www.talkfusion.com/1270061 and join for just $175 plus $20 a month. I am developing some great tutorial on video marketing to enhance the effectiveness of this great service.
Conclusion.
The research shows that using video email will make a positive difference to your business. Right now Talk Fusion not only offers professional templates and a low monthly charge, but the opportunity to recover your investment using referrals.
To contact me with any questions, email john@pems.com.au For more information on video emails and talk fusion, go to http://johngaydon.com where I have a number of articles including this one you can send others to view.
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