Impact of including video in email

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know of any drawbacks to including an image in your email blast that is linked to a video? Any idea if that has a negative impact on delivery rate?

[Matt_Stone2]

If it's just a static image linking to a landing page or something with a video, I don't see why it would have a negative impact. Deliverability won't really be affected by the content behind links, because it doesn't know what's there. The being said, do NOT use link shorteners in an email, if you were at all considering that. Those will most definitely hurt your deliverability.

Additionally, I follow the theory that you design your email as if images will not be enabled. So if you can get away without using an image, or you can supplement it with non-image elements, that's a good practice to follow.

[Anonymous]

Matt -

Thanks for the response. Do you mind elaborating on what you mean by "link shorteners"? What exactly are those?

[Josh_Hill13 · Accepted solution]

A link shortener is like bit.ly or ow.ly. The spam filter can't always tell where that really goes to, so it can mark it as a phishing attack.

Video has been consistently proven to boost conversions on LPs and certainly an image to a video with the proper play icon (>) can help your email CTR.

Deliverability is not affected by images - unless your entire email is images or a single image. I'd be more interested in AB testing the video vs. something else.

[Anonymous]

I use video links in my emails all the time, and have been seeing awesome click-to-open ratios. I would use Vidyard or Wistia to get detailed lead-level information on who is watching your videos.

[Anonymous]

All great advice, thank you all! Would you say the best way to include videos in emails is to include an image with a play icon that links to a video on a landing page? Or is there a better, more effective approach?

[Matt_Stone2]

That's pretty much the best/only way to do it. But like I said, I might supplement that with some text nearby that's also linked and says "Watch the video" or something.

You could also play with adding an animated gif in the email as well.

[Anonymous]

Good thoughts. Thank you everyone for your suggestions and advice!