Video Marketing FAQs: Video in Email, Social, Global + More

Thus the question of “how do I use video in emails” is a popular one. In short, we recommend NOT embedding video in your email for primarily two reasons:

1. Roughly one-third of email clients can’t display embedded video. That’s right, if you code your video into email, chances are the email client will strip the code, leaving your recipient clueless as to your intent.
2. Video is just one element of digital communication. House your video on a landing page that plays video inline with other elements, giving viewers have easy access to all the information they need. This accelerates their move through the customer journey instead of keeping them siloed in email.

So what’s the best practice for video in email? We suggest inserting a video thumbnail into your email which links to an informative video-focused landing page, surrounded by related content. Because visitors have demonstrated an interest in watching, you can set the video to auto-play, increasing video metrics and improving UX.

Listen to Matt Child's advice for how to add video to email in three easy steps.

Additional Resource:

How to Optimize Your Landing Pages for 4X Lead Form Conversion

We’re a global company. What global video issues should I take into consideration? How do I localize video content?

Wow, this is a loaded question! But let’s go through a few considerations.

1. Be very cautious about using free social video sites to distribute global content. Some social video sites are blocked not just by companies internally, but in some cases, an entire country, like China.
2. Create an accessible video environment. Video captioning, whether for language subtitling or government regulation compliance, needs to be compatible across every device, especially for global workforces working on mobile.
3. Localize video content with transcription and translation services. In that way, their messages reach their audiences in their native languages.
4. Localize your site text and onsite metadata for a better experience. 

Our customer Herbalife, created 32 Gallery sites in 6 weeks that incorporated 23 languages ensuring all customers and franchisees had the information they need.

Additional Resource:

Video Marketing Mentors: Scaling Global Enterprise Video
The Complete Marketer’s Guide to Live Streaming

I only have a small number of videos. Why should I consider an online video platform for marketing?

As we say over and over again, video is the most effective form of digital communication. And for that reason, the use of video is increasing at exponential rates--Cisco has projected that video will be 80% of all internet traffic by 2019. So, whenever you choose any type of enterprise business technology, you'll want to anticipate the needs of your company 3-5 years from now.

An online video platform supplies you:

1. Better Internal Video Organization: on the backend, you want to be sure your platform scales with easy-to-use folders and playlists. Create a tagging strategy that allows you categorize assets quickly and dynamically so you can pull these assets into any online content experience..
2. Stronger UX for your Audience: for your viewers, consider using a video experience that is organized by topic. Your viewers can now quickly and easily discover video based on interest while you source them related content for a better understanding of your brand, products, and solutions. For example, our customers including Oracle Marketing Cloud, SXSW, and Accuweather create templated Galleries for their collections of live events and on-demand video.

3. Video Marketing ROI and Initiative Expansion: by utilizing a video platform, you'll have video analytics for your homepage, landing pages and social sites - showing how your audiences are engaging with your content. Even if you only have a few videos, you'll want to know what's working, what's not and how to reiterate on your success.

As you'll hear from Linda Crowe, there's a big difference between just putting a video on your homepage and developing a full video strategy

What is the benefit of taking our videos off of YouTube and Vimeo?

First and foremost, we are firm believers in a blended distribution strategy for video. YouTube has built in communities, so a marketer would be foolish to ignore YouTube during the awareness stage when using video across the customer journey. But there is more to a marketing strategy than just “reach”. Top video and digital marketers understand when it’s time to expand past YouTube and Vimeo.

Some basic things to consider when choosing a free social video site like YouTube versus a professional business-grade online video platform (OVP).

1. In order to lead prospects and customers through the customer journey, you need to lead that individual to your own site for a holistic and compelling content experience.
2. There is a difference between asset SEO for single videos and site SEO. If you post your videos only on YouTube, then search engines will register YouTube (not your own website) as the site with compelling content. Learn how to use video SEO to boost site rank
3. iOn the competitive front, you don’t want the player to display ads for competitors and recommend related titles that will take the viewer away from your content.
4. For those concerned with technical issues, YouTube and Vimeo lack true security features such as LDAP and single sign-on protection for your videos. Also they lack the ability to assign specific administration rights. Every person with administration rights to your free site has FULL administration rights. You either need to assign only a couple of people to oversee your company’s video, or things can get very messy, very quickly.

Listen to Shannon Murphy explain how to get started with Social Video on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Video is everywhere. It is distributed via email, social, and spread across the globe. So, how to do you map video for it's maximum effectiveness? Think about the type of action you want to elicit from each video, in each channel, and then, build a conversation with you viewer. Video enhances the experience with your brand, building trust and loyalty faster than any other medium can. 

Editor's note: This blog originally published June 2nd, 2016. It has been updated with new material.