Up until recently delivering video to an email inbox was not possible. This chapter explains how this is now possible and how advertisers can use it.

Video email and customer engagement

Historically, text based emails and static images have provided limited scope to grab a reader’s attention. Web 2.0 has heralded a new era. The most significant breakthrough has been the ability to stream video via high speed broadband direct to users’ inboxes in an HTML format that avoids being misdirected into the spam box or blocked as a potential virus threat. Video email now comes personalised with rich, stimulating content and a new level of customer engagement.

Implications for advertisers

Yet, technology is still only one element. Without compelling creatives, structured messaging and the eventual delivery to a campaign microsite, the final goals of the marketing campaign may still not be achieved. Increasingly, Brand owners are waking up to this reality and designing integrated campaigns using video email as a key promotional element. Creative and existing film content is being recycled from TV advertising or other communications campaigns to extend the reach of the brand, offering further scope for behavioural tracking and profiling.

Agent Provocateur

In a recent campaign, Agent Provocateur launched a new lingerie range using video email with celebrity endorsement from Kate Moss. The video email would play instantly on arrival in the preview pane window of the inbox, without any user intervention. With one additional click, the user was invited to see the complete version of the video on the main website in an interactive format (utilising CoullTV technology) which contextualised the lingerie modelled within the video. The response rates were extraordinary – thanks Kate! High click through rates (CTRs) of over 50% further fuelled by PR, social news sites and blogs drove traffic to the website and drove online sales.

Difficulties

System cross-compatibility remains a big issue. Creating a solution that works for the seemingly infinite permutations of different platforms, operating systems, email clients and the plethora of browsers used to view online email accounts, is no mean feat. The key to solving the problem is to find a format that works for the majority and then ensuring that the ‘product’ (i.e., the video content) ‘degrades’ gracefully. So, if someone’s email client cannot support streaming video, a preloaded animated gif (a highly compressed picture format that gives the appearance of low resolution video) would be loaded instead. Failing this, users would at least receive an image to avoid an error message being displayed.

Summary

Video email and interactive video have the ability to transform the customer experience from passive observer into active participant. Executed in this fashion, the technology can be used to give campaigns a massive boost, encouraging recipients to click through and attain a required response or transaction. As competition for the inbox increases due to spam, image blocking and the use of preview panes, video email and interactive technologies combined provide a powerful tool that enables marketers to get a result and make their brand stand out!