Recent statistics show that 66% of online marketing content is 30 seconds or less. To compete in today’s market, you need short, exciting visual content. It’s essential to create short-form videos that will catch and keep the attention of your audience. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of short-form videos in your next email campaign, tips for incorporating them, and some of the best practices when it comes to using short-form videos.
What is Short-Form Video?
Many people debate the exact length required to call video content short. You’re probably safe if you keep your videos between one and five minutes. Keep in mind that Google Ads calls any video under 10 minutes a short-form video, meaning you have some flexibility if you need to expand into the sixth, seventh, or eighth minute.
Many people enjoy shorter video content because they’re busy. It’s difficult for them to sit down and watch a 15- or 20-minute video. Your target audience will be far more likely to digest your three-minute how-to video or five-minute case study video if you grip them quickly at the beginning, avoiding the dreaded view abandonment curve.
What Are the Benefits of Short-Form Videos
Generally speaking, many people are visual learners. They remember what they see on video longer than anything they might read. Your short-form video content makes an impression on the brain, meaning it’s likely that visiting email subscribers may take immediate action on your sales calls to action. If they don’t take that step right away, then the video images will at least help your leads remember you long enough to pay attention when your next email hits their inboxes.
The benefits of short-form video extend into where you place video content. The possibilities are almost endless when you consider the following areas that make for an excellent way to use video:
- social media;
- home page content;
- blog posts;
- partnerships;
- email marketing.
Let’s discuss in detail why you need to place extra attention on using short-form videos with your email marketing campaign.
Why Should You Use Video in Email Marketing Campaigns
Repurposing videos that you post to Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube is the simplest way to get video content in front of your leads during an email marketing campaign. It doesn’t matter where you originally post a video, because you’ll most likely create short, punchy videos to succeed on that platform. A TikTok video is far shorter than a video that you might upload to your YouTube channel. However, you can create a seven-minute YouTube tutorial video and it still qualifies as short-form content.
The great thing about using a short-form video marketing strategy for email marketing campaigns is that you can take all that social media content and repurpose it by inserting it into email follow-up messages to subscribers.
Beyond this obvious benefit to using short-form video for email marketing, many other reasons exist to focus on video for email. Your content becomes more shareable via email because people who love your videos will enjoy forwarding your emails to others. Your click-through rates will increase because subscribers click to watch the video.
You can improve email open rates by letting subscribers know that a video is waiting for them inside the email via the subject line. Some email systems let you embed the video directly into the email content. Even for subscribers who can’t receive embedded videos, they won’t miss out because they can click out to where your videos exist on social media or your website.
Another benefit to combining email marketing with short-form videos is the trust people place in this type of content. The ultimate result you should expect to see is an increase in sales conversions from joining these two forms of marketing together.
Tips for a Successful Video Email Marketing Campaign
It’s one thing to know the benefits of this marketing strategy. It’s another thing to employ it with success. Let’s look at tips for creating a winning email marketing video plan.
Use “Video” in Your Subject Lines
Let your subscribers know that you’re sending them a video. An effective way to do this is to put the word “video” at the beginning of the subject line in brackets:
[Video] How to learn Spanish quickly
Or, you might try putting the brackets at the end.
Use an Image Thumbnail
You can’t control whether a subscriber’s email client (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) or their specific device (smartphone, tablet, etc.) allows for embedded videos to show up properly.
What you can control is using a clickable image that appears in the email. Create an intriguing image for each short-form video that you send out and make it clickable. It will send readers over to where your video exists, whether on YouTube, in a blog post, or on one of your social media channels.
Add Copy Above Your Video
Write some copy at the beginning of each email to introduce your short-form videos. This ensures that the email doesn’t get flagged as spam. It also helps your open rates, because that first sentence shows up as a second line underneath the subject line in your subscriber’s email client and may intrigue them about the contents of the video.
Create Quality Video Content
This might sound obvious to you. However, some marketers get caught up in using strategies to the point where they forget the most important thing: making sure they understand their target market and creating short-form videos that are clear and compatible with different platforms.
It’s essential to remember how your audience will be viewing your content. With mobile viewing growing 233% since 2013, you want to create content that is intriguing on both larger and smaller screens.
Statistics show that around 83% of mobile users vs 53% of desktop users are viewing content. Because of this, you want to ensure that you are not neglecting any platform that your audience may be using.
Using MP4 format for video files offers the highest quality video with the lowest size of storage necessary. It’s also compatible with several different media players and platforms. You’ll also want to use the proper resolution for your videos. As a rule of thumb, you can use the following chart as a guide:
| Resolution Type | Common Name | Aspect Ratio | Pixel Size |
| Resolution Type | 480p | 4:3 | 640 x 480 |
| HD (High Definition) | 720p | 16:9 | 1280 x 720 |
| Full HD (FHD) | 1080p | 16:9 | 1920 x 1080 |
| QHD (Quad HD) | 1440p | 16:9 | 2560 x 1440 |
| 2K video | 1080p | 1:1.77 | 2048 x 1080 |
| 4K video or Ultra HD (UHD) | 4K or 2160p | 1:1.9 | 3840 x 2160 |
| 8K video or Full Ultra HD | 8K or 4320p | 16∶9 | 7680 x 4320 |
Types of Short-Form Videos to Use in Emails
There are many ways to use videos inside your email marketing campaigns. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
How-to Videos
Create video content that teaches your audience how to do something specific. These types of videos typically range from three to 10 minutes in length. How-to videos build trust between you and your subscribers, because people appreciate the help as you take them from confusion to understanding regarding your product.
This video is a great example:
Recap Recent “Live” Events
If you just finished a virtual summit, put together a short-form video that recaps the most exciting parts of the event to draw interest. Allow subscribers to sign up on the waiting list for the next summit. Don’t forget to drive those video viewers to your sales page or call booking page, too.
Recap videos can help your audience see what they may have possibly missed:
Customer Case Studies
Case studies make for excellent short-form video opportunities. In three to five minutes, you can show email subscribers how you’ve helped a current customer.
Explain your happy customer’s situation before meeting you. Then, walk through how your product or service solved the problem and how your customer is in a better situation now.
A case study gives you the chance to show the benefits of your product or service, as opposed to simply talking about it. This can inspire trust in your product’s success. Finding clients that benefitted from your product or service make for great case study videos:
Reveal Your Company’s Culture
Make videos that highlight your employees. Give your people a chance to shine while showing email subscribers an inside peek into your company culture. Part of building trust is showing prospects that your company is run by real people who want to make a difference for others.
Best Practices for Short-Form Video Email Campaigns
Pay attention to the following best practices when developing this type of campaign. They’ll help make sure that your email marketing efforts cause your subscribers to engage with the video content.
Know Your Audience
Every three to six months, you should sit down and assess how well you understand your audience. Never forget that your market continues to evolve. New competitors enter the scene. Your target market’s needs adjust over time.
Take time to make sure your messaging is still “on point.” Does any of your marketing language fail to work as well as it once did? Adjust to current trends and use that to make more effective videos to reach your audience.
Use Effective CTAs in Your Emails
Your job is to interest subscribers enough so that they click the link in each email leading them to the video. Use a call-to-action in every email that grabs their attention. If your click-through rates are low, then take a copywriting course or hire a third-party copywriter to help you adjust your language to be more effective.
Always Create Curiosity
Work to create curiosity at every turn. Your subject lines, calls to action, and even video intros must make subscribers curious enough to keep moving through your sales funnel. For example, a subject line that asks “did you know?” will typically work better than “learn how to meditate”.
Conclusion
By themselves, short-form videos allow you to stand out and gain authority. Combining them with email marketing campaigns combines the two strategies into a power-packed punch of marketing effectiveness.
Your first step is to choose one type of short-form video to use in your next email send. Make the video, send it to subscribers, and then analyze how well it works. Learn from that experience and continue using the strategy on a long-term basis to see long-lasting results.
