What is a video newsletter?

Email marketing – the context

We open this post with a certainty: the role of “old” email in today’s digital marketing is not only still central and decisive, but increasingly important.

It’s something that all professionals in the field are well aware of. 

But let’s let the data tell the story: 

We’ll start with the broader context; around 4 billion people, worldwide, use email on a daily basis. This figure is expected to rise to 4.6 billion by 2025 (statista.com). Already, more than 306 billion emails are sent and received every day (statista.com).And we come straight to marketing and communications, the aspects that matter most to us:

• Email marketing is used today by one out of every two media planning experts. This is a very high percentage and one that is growing all the time (hubspot.com).
• 64% of smaller (and often innovative) companies are using email marketing to reach their customers (campaignmonitor.com).
• 37% of brands are increasing their email marketing budget; in contrast, only 1.3% are reducing it (litmus.com)
• Revenue from email marketing is expected to reach a total of $11 billion by the end of 2023. For comparison, this figure was around $7.5 billion in 2020 (statista.com). Here, growth is very evident.

We don’t need further evidence: all of the data point in the same direction, and the direction is crystal clear.

But what happens when the effectiveness of email marketing is combined with the boost of video—the most powerful and effective media in the digital ecosystem? 

The answer, as you can guess, can only make all marketers happy. 

And it is on this topic, that of video newsletters, that we will focus on. 

We will see what it is all about and isolate its top 5 benefits.

 

 

 

Video newsletters – what are they? What are the main benefits? 

Let’s start with the basics. The definition is very simple: a video newsletter uses video as the main media, inserted directly into the body of the email. 

And – mind you, this is always a good practice – surrounded by text or other content.

Before moving on to the benefits of employing video newsletters, let’s make one specification: the context around the video is also crucial. It must be simple, clear, consistent, even graphically so. However, the video should take “center stage.” It is here that the recipient’s attention must be focused.

That being said, here is a list of the top 5 benefits of video newsletters.

 

Increased opening rate

We have already pointed out the huge number of emails that are sent and received each day. And how it is constantly increasing. 

Consequently, the first important problem marketers face is to get their newsletters noticed, to make sure that they stand out from the crowd, that they don’t end up directly in the trash, to the disinterest (or, worse, annoyance) of those who receive them.

Without this attention, all the energy invested in conception and production is wasted, thrown to the wind.

And the good news, as far as video newsletters are concerned, comes from a very interesting finding in recent research:

•  Simply including the word “video” in the subject line of your email can raise the open rate by 6%. (superoffice.com). It seems like a small percentage, but email marketers know that it can make a big difference.

Messages that are comprehensible and memorable

So, embedding videos in your company’s newsletters increases the open rate. But, clearly, it is not enough.

Let’s return to the awareness we focused on above. 

Every day, we all receive a very large number of emails.We also increasingly check our inbox on our smartphones, in often hectic situations, amidst a bombardment of stimuli coming at us from multiple fronts. And we have limited time to read them. 

At the same time, brands need to provide us with a lot of information, information that is not always simple and immediate…in addition to the storytelling, with its rhythms and timing.

In this sense, it’s understood harnessing the power of video is the best strategy for making your communications understandable, usable, and enjoyable. And it’s not just a matter of comprehensibility: information conveyed in video newsletters stays more clearly and longer in the minds of recipients. This is what we mean by being memorable.

With this in mind, let’s look at some concrete data:

• On average, the user viewing a video understands and believes 95% of the message contained. When it comes to text only this drops to 10% (insivia.com).
• 69% of those who receive marketing communications say that they prefer video to be informed about the features of a product or service. Only 18% prefer a text-based article, 4% prefer an infographic, 3% prefer an eBook or manual, and 2% prefer a phone call (wyzowl.com).

 

A question of engagement 

Messages conveyed via email through video are more understandable and memorable; but that’s not all.

The ability to trigger the engagement of your target audience plays a key role in marketing.

And video is the media that is most capable of triggering engagement: this is a very well-known fact. Just think about what happens on social networks: here, engagement is perfectly measurable, and posts that contain video are the ones that perform best.

It’s something very natural when you think about it: you’re conveyed several things when you’re enjoying a video. There is the visual part, of course, but also the audio part. There is the informational part and the storytelling part. The view can grasp many nuances, perceive the “atmospheres,” the “rhythm,” the imagery of a brand without the need for very long and complicated turns of phrase.

It’s the digital experience that is most similar to the one we are used to in face-to-face communication, in the “real world.” 

Here, we simultaneously have both rational understanding and emotional involvement.

We’ll close this point with a statistic that relates specifically to email marketing, one that is very recent and very significant: 

• 77% of marketers noted an increase in email-related engagement in 2021 (hubspot.com)

 

Click-through rate and effectiveness of your call to action  

Video newsletters tend to be opened immediately. They convey more understandable and memorable messages. And they trigger engagement with recipients. 

The next step, however, is the decisive one.

In fact, in a video, the inclusion of a call to action is often extremely more effective. 

Why? Because it comes as the natural culmination of a journey that starts with capturing attention and winds through storytelling that is not only informative but also enjoyable for the user.

All of this, consequently, turns into a surge in click-through rates, one of the most crucial metrics for email marketing (and beyond).

Pay attention to how you create your calls to action: they should be consistent with the context, never abrupt, prominently featured, but without giving a “shouty” impression.

One way to make calls to action even more appealing? 

Aiming toward personalization.  And that brings us to the last point in our list.

 

The possibilities of personalization-from data to a one-to-one dialog  

We are at a decisive point, the final one. Here, we will start with data from a recent survey of marketing professionals; it is are very interesting indeed:

The most effective email marketing strategies are: segmenting your target audience (for 78% of respondents), message personalization (for 72%) and campaign automation (for 71%).  (hubspot.com)

All these sides stand together under one label, and this label identifies a tool that is the real game changer for video newsletters. We’re talking about personalized videos.

What are they about? 

Personalized videos are built to change based on the characteristics of the recipients, automatically.

The starting point? 

Knowledge of these target audiences, of course.  

And how ? By broad, careful, and deep data collection, from the digital traces we all leave online to so-called First Party Data.

With this asset at their disposal, companies can take a picture of their target audience, to “zoom in,” segment it into clusters with homogeneous characteristics until they identify as many targets as there are individuals (…thus, email recipients).

And to each of these targets (i.e., each recipient) distribute a tailored communication.

How to do it?  By relying on specialized platforms such as the Babelee Video Platform.

The results, on all fronts, are very important. 

In particular: engagement and click-through rates soar, with increasingly surgical calls to action. Communications are no longer one-to-many, but are turning into a true one-to-one dialog, perfect not only for getting to the moment of conversion, but also for laying the foundation for an exchange that aims at loyalty.

And that’s not all: personalization always triggers a virtuous circle; data on individual users, in fact, becomes more accurate and up-to-date from time to time. 

Through the analysis of results, your video newsletter strategies can be recalibrated to be made more and more effective, in a spiral of continuous improvement.