Today's digital culture is highly textual: Emails, text messages, Tweets and Facebook posts appear constantly on our computer screens and mobile devices. But the Web landscape is also extremely visual, whether through static images like those users post on Instagram, the short clips you can find on Vine or longer-form video as found on YouTube and Vimeo. Those last two platforms, in particular, have been used with high frequency and effectiveness by businesses looking to gain customers online.
It stands to reason then that emails combining written and visual content in a more complete way can be extremely useful for grabbing the attention of your email marketing list and creating conversions.
Lessons from the monks of email marketing
Marketing email design firm Email Monks recently released a study that showed just how valuable video can be in promotional message campaigns.
According to the study, the return on investment (ROI) offered by emails that include video is 280 percent higher than the average ROI for email promotions. Furthermore, Web platforms and mobile email apps have a higher compatibility with sophisticated video than many marketers may realize. The majority – 52 percent – of email clients for Web and mobile operating systems support HTML5 video streaming.
Marketers, however, don't seem to be catching on to the possibilities of video. Only 25 percent of firms surveyed by Email Monks said that they had implemented email marketing video. Furthermore, while 25 percent said it was very likely that they'd employ the tool in the future and 55 percent said it was at least in the realm of possibility, a relatively substantial 20 percent said there was no chance they'd use video in their promotional messages.
Email: The last frontier for video?
The hesitancy to adopt video for email marketing purposes that Email Monks found among respondents is especially surprising because of how widespread the tool has become in promotional strategies executed through other online media.
The Web Video Marketing Council recently published a study, "Q4 2013 Video Marketing Survey Report," revealing that video is extremely popular as a marketing tool. According to the study, 93 percent of firms are doing at least some of their marketing communications through a video platform, and 84 percent feature video on their websites.
Furthermore, marketing teams are devoting both careful consideration and cold, hard cash to the tool. The study showed that 70 percent of marketers have applied search engine optimization principles to their marketing videos, and another 70 percent plan to devote more money to video in the future.