Video and animated GIFs in newsletters
Video is essential for driving engagement and achieving results. Studies show that you can achieve higher open rates, increase clicks on video links, and reduce unsubscribe rates by using video. However, very few email clients support this. So, what is the best way to use video in email campaigns?
GIFs and videos are effective ways to evoke emotions, allowing you to connect with customers in a completely different way than with just text and static images. Although video requires some extra effort, it can engage your readers to a much greater extent.
Wordstream suggests that businesses using video in their marketing can grow revenue up to 49 percent faster than those that do not. Another statistic in favour of video comes from Insivia. They found that users are 64 percent more likely to buy a product after watching a video.
In other words, using video and GIF animations in email marketing is highly effective for capturing customer interest.
How to use video in newsletters
Unfortunately, very few email clients support embedded video, as you might be used to on your website. Therefore, you need to look at other options.
A practical solution is to use a standard static image and link it to the webpage hosting the video.
In Make, you can insert videos from YouTube and Vimeo. We automatically retrieve the video thumbnail and overlay a play button. You can also upload your own image designed to look like a video and link it to the webpage where the video is hosted.
If you use YouTube, you can set the video to play automatically as soon as the reader clicks play. To do this, add ?autoplay=1 to the end of the video link.
How to use GIFs in newsletters to capture interest
Another effective technique to bring your newsletters to life is using animated GIFs. This can also benefit your marketing efforts. For instance, you can use custom GIFs to demonstrate a point rather than explaining it with heavy text. This makes it easier for the recipient to grasp the message instead of just clicking away.
What is the support for GIF animations?
Most modern email clients support animated GIFs, but certain versions, such as Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, and Windows Phone 7, only display the first frame of the animation. You should therefore place the most important information in the first frame. A GIF is a series of images combined into an animation. Each image is called a "frame". This first frame is what displays when GIF support is missing.
There are several resources available to help you create GIFs without in-depth design knowledge, such as Make a gif and Giphy.
Although it requires some extra effort, using video and GIF animations in email marketing is an investment that can pay off through increased engagement and sales.
Good luck!
Gobi Stories is another option for adding video to newsletters to make them more dynamic.
If you want to dive deeper into using video and animated GIFs in newsletters, we recommend: https://www.litmus.com/blog/video-in-email https://www.litmus.com/blog/a-guide-to-animated-gifs-in-email