#Embed video autoplay gmail email series#

It also tells people exactly what’s in your email. Use the word “video” in the subject line. As we discussed earlier, adding the word “video” to your email subject line increases open rates. Here’s what you can do to get people to open your emails:

If the recipient never opens your email, they’ll never watch your video.

One of the biggest challenges in email marketing is getting people to open your email in the first place. If you embed a video directly, you have to do a lot more work to ensure that your email lands in the inbox rather than the spam folder. Spam filters are generally wary of any non-standard email content, including emails that retrieve large files and pull them into the inbox. Fewer email deliverability issues.Ī video that plays in the inbox doesn’t guarantee that your emails will get marked as spam or blocked. If people never leave their inbox, it’s much more difficult to quantify their actions. You’ll be able to see exactly how many people watch your video and how many take the next step in the process once they watch. Guiding the viewer to a separate page creates even more trackable actions and gives you more data for optimizing your emails. Your email marketing program tracks key actions like open rates and click-through rates. But it gives you far more control over the end-user experience and eliminates all of the other distractions in the user’s email inbox. Obviously, this takes a bit more work than simply uploading the video to YouTube. Since your video plays outside the recipient’s inbox, you can house your video on a custom landing page where you have complete control over the messaging, call-to-action, and other links on the page. However, this method offers a few things that the direct play method doesn’t. This diminishes trust in the long run it isn’t worth it.Įmbedding videos in email this way may not produce a totally seamless experience, since the video doesn’t play directly in the recipient’s inbox. Avoid using an outrageous thumbnail just to get people to click.

Set realistic expectations. Always use thumbnails that accurately represent what is in your video.

The most foolproof way to do this is to use a bright background with dark text. Using a high-contrast image makes it legible. Make a high-contrast thumbnail. Your thumbnail image is usually pretty small. Use text in your thumbnail image. A quick snippet of text gives even more context for your video and ensures viewers start watching it with the right expectations.Ĭreate a thumbnail template. A consistent thumbnail layout creates a brand for your videos and makes them readily identifiable, even among a slew of other thumbnails.

#Embed video autoplay gmail email series#

Start with a screenshot from your video. Start with a screenshot, then use a graphic creation tool to overlay text and build out your thumbnail.Īdd a play button image. The Wistia team ran a series of A/B tests and found that a thumbnail that resembles a video (play button and all) performs better than a pure video screenshot. There are tons of ways to create a compelling video thumbnail, but here are the quick and dirty best practices. This thumbnail acts as a play button that email recipients can click to play your video.

First, you need to create a thumbnail for your video.