Best practice for videos in emails
In retirement homes, it is common for residents who can no longer chew to puree lunch. Everyone else, of course, enjoys their steak with fried potatoes the conventional way — without adjusting the dosage form. When it comes to video in emails, senders face similar challenges to the kitchen in a retirement home: Recipients sometimes have completely different skills and requirements for receiving the message. The problem is, on the one hand, that there is no industry-wide standard for videos in emails so far. On the other hand, there is a wide range of email clients that handle videos in very different ways: One recipient can play the video embedded in the HTML5 email without any problems, while the other only sees an error message. Most senders have so far solved the problem using the lowest common technical denominator: A still image with a play button. So steak, puréed, for everyone. If video in emails is so complicated, why should you do the work?
Why bother with videos anyway?
There is no form of communication that conveys content in such a holistic, compressed form as films. Spaces, people, clothing, narration, action, light, colors, sound, music — everything merges into an intuitive overall impression that is emotionally much deeper than pure text or image communication. Videos literally immerse recipients in a world and are very convincing. Regardless of whether it's about product or image films, testimonials, reports or viral fun videos. Since video production has become much cheaper today thanks to the rapid development of technology, videos are perfect for integration into everyday marketing communications. And therefore also for distribution via e-mail — provided that it works. This is because the length of stay and conversion rates are higher than with any other content. And that pays off for the shipper.
Routes to the recipient: walking, crutch, wheelchair
The ideal case for the video is, of course, when the recipient's email client allows direct playback. However, this is only possible with a few clients that correctly interpret HTML5 code — and even in this case, the sender must provide a video in various formats. However, many clients only allow the display of animated gifs, which is not a “real” moving image format, but a kind of flipbook of individual frames that are taken from the video and create the appearance of movement through their automatic change. In addition to this video-with-crutch solution, there is also the wheelchair version, which is used by the few but widely used clients that cannot even display animated gifs. This version consists of a still image with a play button, which links to a landing page on which the video is then played. Because it is just as complex, the most convenient solution to the dilemma is uniformity.
The right one for everyone instead of one for all
Since there is not one format that works correctly for all recipients, the solution to the problem lies in providing different formats and deciding for each recipient on a case-by-case basis which format of delivery provides the best result for them. However, the prerequisite for this is that there are systems that are able to recognize in almost real time which individual configurations are available at the recipient and then import the correct content variant in fractions of a second.
Dynamic delivery of video formats
Context-sensitive delivery is the buzzword for this — and today there are several providers that enable the use of videos in emails in this way. These include MovableInc, LiveIntent or Kickdynamic. The basic idea is similar for all solutions — a tag is integrated into the email, which enables client configurations to be recognized and which controls the output of the appropriate content, i.e. videos, animated gifs or still images. The solutions offered by the above providers differ only in the details.
The big advantage of dynamic image delivery is that online marketers can now send videos in emails with the good feeling that the video is definitely displayed in a suitable variant for every recipient, regardless of the device and email client, and that they can play it — always offering the best possible display quality and ease of use in their situation.
