How Video Saved the Email Star: Part Two

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Last week I gave you some general facts and ideas about using video in email marketing. That post wasn’t about action items, it was written more to provoke thought than anything. And I hope it did. The only way to drive innovation is to get enough people to adopt emerging channels, trends, and topics. Video won’t gain widespread support until software companies and ISPs realize that the demand exists. But to help you do what you can with video right now, I’ve listed some tips below.

  1. Provide an eye-catching link. Normal links are boring. Instead, upload your video to YouTube, take a still of the video, and embed the video URL in the image. You can even add a play icon on top of the still for some extra visual candy.
  2. Product demos. If you have a product that really shines when people see it in action, then video is probably perfect for you. Show off your product and all its cool and innovative features.
  3. You have a recognizable C-level exec. If you have a C-level executive at your company who is highly recognizable to the public, or within your industry, feature him in your videos. Take advantage of his name recognition to generate more views for your video content.
  4. Whiteboard videos. Two benefits here. These videos are simple to produce and you can use the whiteboard for visual effect and for better explaining technical info. These videos should feature a strong presenter.
  5. How-to Videos. Like product demos, show your product in use.  Explain its benefits, and highlight how it can help people solve a particular problem, or fill a need.
  6. Customer testimonials. Do you have customers who love you and are vocal about it? If you do, have them share it in a video.
  7. Interviews with experts. Leverage industry experts to explain the value of your vertical, and more specifically, what need your particular product fills.

Hopefully you’re walking away from this post with a bunch of ideas for how video can fit into your email marketing program. If you’ve used video in your email campaigns before, how did you use it, and how well did it work?

How to Build a Compelling Email Offer

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A compelling offer that delivers true value to your current or potential customers is an essential component of any marketing strategy. But it’s even more important in acquisition email marketing, where you’ve yet to develop a relationship with the recipient of your marketing emails.

At first glance, building a compelling offer can seem daunting, but it’s really a matter of researching your customer and capitalizing on their pain points in a unique way.  Here are five steps to get your started with your offer development initiatives.

  1. Know your customer. Understanding your customers is the first step in developing an offer that they’re going to like. What kind of products are they interested in? Have they bought a product like yours recently or ever? Have they visited one of your brick and mortar stores? These are just some of the questions you should ask before developing an offer. The answers will determine the “bribe” of your offer. Will it be content, a free consultation, or a discount?  
  2. Key in on your customers’ pain points. What kind of market pain is your potential customer feeling and how does your product cure that pain? This question ties nicely with step one. Understanding exactly what your potential customers’ frustrations are, and how your product fits into that picture, serves as excellent criteria to judge your offer against.
  3. Understand the competition. Study the competition.  What kind of offers do your competitors send to their customers?  Understanding the competition can help you develop a unique offer that better resonates with your customers even though your product/services may be similar to another company’s.
  4. Know best practices.  Gain a thorough understanding of best practices as they relate acquisition email marketing. There are a number of criteria related to copy, design, and coding that can make or break the success of your campaign. We have plenty of great resources that can help you with best practices, but if you want a more hands on approach, contact Marketfish Creative Solutions. 
  5. Test and measure. As we’ve said before, acquisition email is a process of testing and refining until the desired results are achieved. The same notion applies to your offers. Create several and run smaller test campaigns. As you test your offers, be sure to test across the usual factors like subject-line, design, and audience. Once you know the combination of factors that’s most effective, roll out a larger campaign.   

I hope you found these steps helpful. Developing a compelling offer can present one of marketing’s greatest challenges. But gaining a detailed understanding of your customer and the competition is a great start to continued success with your acquisition marketing campaigns. And remember, always test, measure, and refine the results.

Now it’s your turn.  How do you go about building offers for your email and direct mail acquisition campaigns? 

How to Turn Welcome Emails into Revenue

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Research by Skyline Technologies states that welcome emails have an average open rate of 50-60%.  Do I have your attention yet?  If you’re one of those savvy marketers we love so much, you’re already thinking of the untapped revenue potential that this high open rate presents.

Unfortunately, many marketers view welcome emails as little more than an opportunity to say, “Hi, thanks for subscribing,” request that they be added to the recipient’s safe sender list, and explain their privacy policy.  Marketers who think like that are missing valuable chances to transition new subscribers into deeply engaged customers.

Last week, HubSpot published an excellent post about this very idea. I’d like to highlight a few of the points they make, and add Marketfish’s take on the topic.  You can read the full text of the HubSpot post here.

You can use welcome emails to:

  1. Promote your content. Since you want these subscribers to become loyal customers, use this as an opportunity to push your lead generation content.  Showcase your latest or most popular webinars, ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, etc.  You can link to a landing page with a robust form (just make sure it’s optimized for conversions) and collect more information about your new subscribers.  
  2. Present subscriber surveys. Give your subscribers any easy way to share information about their wants and needs.  What content do they want to receive, and how frequently?  What kind of products or services are of interest? These questions help you gather more customer insight, and they open up opportunities to promote other products in your portfolio.
  3. Ask subscribers to become Fans and Followers. We know that email and social should, theoretically, be best friends.  Use welcome emails as an opportunity to introduce your subscribers to your social channels.  This will help boost the performance of your social channel and deeply integrate social into your marketing mix. This also helps you promote content that may be exclusive to your social channels.

I hope you find this information helpful, and that it gives you a bunch of ideas for improving subscriber engagement and ultimately, the ROI of your email channel.   If you have any additional thoughts, please leave them in the comments. And be sure to check out that HubSpot post!

How Video Saved the Email Star

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What a novel concept, embedding video into your email marketing messages.  Believe it or not, email used to be the pinnacle of communication technology.  That’s not necessarily the case anymore.  While there’s a bunch of really cool companies driving innovation in the email space (check out our infographic for more on that), as a whole, email still lags behind the breakneck innovation that you find in other digital marketing channels.

This is evident in that most email clients don’t immediately render images, always support background images, or support most embedded video formats.  Not to mention that tabled HTML is still the markup language most widely supported by email clients.  In fact, according to research by CampaignMonitor, “the only reliable way to embed video in email is an animated GIF.”

So what does this mean, should you embed video or not?  Well, it’s a bit complicated.  If your video is short, and isn’t reliant on sound or image quality, then go ahead with animated GIFs.  If you need to display a high-quality video in one of the more popular formats (Quicktime, Flash, Windows Media), then linking to your call to action (CTA) to an external source is the way to go.

Regardless of the technical challenges and limitations of email, you shouldn’t write off video entirely.  According to a recent study by the Web Video Marketing Council (WVMC) and Flimp Media, video can seriously improve campaign performance and conversions.  The study found the following:

  • 88% of senior marketing executives say integrating video with email has a positive impact on email campaign performance
  • 76% of senior marketing executives say campaigns that integrate video and email generate high click-through rates (CTR)
  • 72% of marketers who integrate video with email say prospects are more likely to make a purchase or take other desired actions after viewing video content sent via email.

You can find the full text of this study here.

You can see that there is obvious value to incorporating video into your email campaigns.  I encourage you to evaluate your email channel, and see where video fits into the (moving) picture.  In the coming weeks, I’ll publish more about video and how it can improve email campaign performance, as well as the performance of your marketing efforts overall.

Have you successfully used video in your email messaging?  If so, what results did you see, and what advice would you pass on to those marketers who are considering incorporating video into their email marketing programs?