Personally, I think I’ll still stick to text e-mails and if I have a video for my reader to watch, I’ll entice them to click on the link to go view it by leading into that with persuasive copy.

You just can’t go wrong with a text e-mail. It’s "The Smartest Thing To Do".

Another good suggestion there. Using ALT tag to ensure that people click through in case they have their images turned off. I never thought about that — this type of useful tip keeps on bringing me back to this blog.

I like the idea of using an image and text link to cater for different readers. I have a few videos on Web 2.0 that I plan to share so this could be a great way to do it. Thanks for the tip - very helpful as always!

Prior to moving over to aweber, we had been trying different tactics for getting open rate up and click through rates us.

Telling people in the title that a "Bob, Watch this video … " got a huge open rate and click through. In the (light) html email we put one picture with a link back to the site. The embedded picture was a screenshot of the video player so it looked like it was built into the email.

Worked for us, we are thinking though of just going back to plain text to increase delivery rates.

Thanks for this great tip.

I’ve discovered the hard way that embedding videos and even certain images in my newsletters can be problematic. We have to remember that our subscribers do not all own the latest and most up to date computers and software. The more we can give options that allow all levels of tech users to enjoy our content, the better.

Just a thought about Videos in general. As someone pointed out, we do not all have access to all the resources required to view Videos and even if we do, in some countries, it comes at a price not affordable to many people. As I am one of them, I unfortunately immediatly delete any message that says, "click here to watch video" - Sorry!

PLEASE, you told us what to do but not how to do it (??)
How do you put an image in the email that clicks to the video?
Where can I get an image of a video screen with a play button?
Do I save it to my computer and then import it as a regular graphic whenever I want to use it in my email?
How do I write alt code? Where should the alt code go to when they click it, the You Tube site where my video will play? (I use You Tube.)
If you can respond, I would REALLY appreciate it!

People comprehend video 60 times better than they comprehend the written word. If your video is short and to the point, it will get your message across in a much more effective way than the same information presented as text only.

It is simple to include an article with the video for those who do not have the ability to watch video on the Internet.

By including persuasive page copy along with your image and ALT text which links to the video, you will have the best of all worlds.

The easy way I have found to send video is through UTBE. Yopu place the video on UTUBE and get the exact URL for that video clip.
Then you can embed it into your web page and they click on the video and pl;ays on your page. It is transparent to the consumer that the file is playing from the utube site.

For an email I send the clickble link in text based email. Thye click the link or cut & paste it in their browser and the video plays from utube.

I just started doing this so I have no sample space to detrmine how good it works.

I read a couple of days back, 20% use AOL. How will this work with your AOL subscribers. Will they still be able to view the video using
their AOL email client. If not, would it be worth losing those subscribers. It seems to me it is better to let all your subscribers click a link and go to a video hosting service.

Hi all;

Here we go again with the "Battle of the Century"…

In this episode, TEXT-based emails tries to foil its nemesis HTML-based emails, by playing the "better delivery" card!

As with all things marketing related (in fact, as with all things business and life related) it is important to TEST, TEST, TEST what works for you and your subscriber base.

The three most dangerous words are: "I Know That"

While you may know what works for you, and while generally speaking certain "norms" do apply across the board, it is ALWAYS worth testing your assumptions just to make sure you "Still Know That".

I transcribe for a lot of information marketers and real estate professionals and all of them are discussing this technology and how they use it or will use it in their future marketing campaigns. I think it’s going to be as powerful for business owners as having a web presence was a few years ago.

Wow, great idea and ALOT of Great comments and additional suggestions!

I’m going to *definitely* try this…(gotta get some more videos done first thought

Seriously though, I had looked at that service that offers it, (world something), would rather have the clicks to the site.

Again, Thanks for the great tips!

Paul Keetch - I totally agree with your 3 deadly words "I know that"… so true

This is a excellent tip for using video! So far I have only used text link in the e-mails. I will try this in the near future. Thanks for the tip!

Justin,

This is precisely the technique I’ve been using and is how I teach the small business owners and salespeople we train how to do it. I create and upload the video to my blog and use a WordPress plugin to embed a flash player in the posts. This way I can keep the traffic on my site instead of leaking it off to YouTube or another video site.

The effectiveness is quite high — I’ve seen significant improvements in traffic as well as conversions from it (including registrations for events, newsletter opt-ins, free report downloads, etc.)

Any small business should be using this technique, in my opinion. Certainly internet marketers should! Video can be very powerful.

Thanks — as always — for the great content!

I have been working with ‘video email’ for a while. Now before I started I did a lot of research on the internet on video emailing. What I have learned is that most people love to receive video email.

So I started using a program which is called Eyejot - http://www.eyejot.info - which sends an HTML email. People need to click on a picture in the email and they’ll be directed to a website where they can see and hear the video. That’s awesome!

Never really though of using images that link to the video. I will try this and post my success.

Great information!

I use video in all of my emails to my subscribers and I only use a text based emails. The click through rate is pretty good, but I rely on copywriting skills for that.

Thanks for this post!

This is a great idea. If only everyone used Gmail because they now show Youtube videos right inside Gmail which is great because you don’t have to click out unless you want to watch it on Youtube.

Thanks for the tip.