Email and video together boost click-throughs for VideoLink.

VideoLink is a stylish video production company headquartered near Boston. And, as an Emma customer, they understand that a stylish email stands out in the inbox. But in a recent campaign they added video, and it stood out in the response data as well.

They set up the campaign to promote their new (and, may we add, fabulous) website. But before hitting send, they were true to their name. They made a short video, added a screen shot to their email and linked it to a video landing page they made through a service called Flimp On-Demand.

“We worried that a text-only email would be overlooked,” said VideoLink Sales Manager Marty DeLoreto. “So by adding the video player to the email we hoped it would attract more attention and hopefully more click throughs.”

Plenty of folks clicked through, all right. Their click-through rate was a fantastic 26.2 percent. And while Emma was tracking all the email response data, Flimp was tracking the data for the video page. Of people who started the video, 64.5 percent watched the entire thing. And 127 people clicked a link to visit the website.

While video in email may not be for everyone, it’s certainly worth trying. Consider these statistics from Forrester Research:

• 71% of online audiences watch Internet video.
• The number of video streams likely will double by 2013.
• Video in email can increase click throughs by two to three times.

Still, there’s no perfect way to embed video to play within an email (yet). But what VideoLink did is fairly common and effective: use screen shots and text links to send people to a landing page that hosts the video. Emma customers can also host videos in their document library and link to ‘em, too.

And the video doesn’t have to be fancy to be effective, either. VideoLink’s video lasted only 49 seconds and it was fairly simple, with CEO Gina Chudnow describing the new website’s features.

“We also had more personal comments back to the CEO praising her performance and congratulating her on the launch,” Marty added. “That kind of communication would rarely happen with a text-only email.”

Marty plans to use email and video together in the quarterly newsletter, featuring other high-level employees. How about you? What kinds of things are you doing (or want to do) with video and email? Do let us know, won’t you? We’d love to hear about it.