Tag: video marketing

How to massively increase clicks for videos in your email marketing

August 30, 2013 by Julian Wellings Leave a Comment

Here’s a really quick and simple tip.

If you’re including video in your email newsletters and e-shots, you’ll know that at the moment, most email clients don’t support embedded videos.

So you might be thinking your only option is some hyperlinked text saying “Watch the video…”.

Wrong!

The best way to massively increase clicks for your video is to embed it as a screen grab and overlay a play button onto it, so it looks like an embedded video.

Yes, you need to have a text link as well, for people whose email clients are blocking images, but the screen grab will get many more clicks.

Below are two examples from a client e-newsletter I produce, which prove this. The percentage of clicks the image got is shown at the bottom, and clicks for the the text link are at the top. As you’ll see there’s a big difference.

How to take a screen grab of a video

In Windows you could use the built in snipping tool, or if you’ve edited the video yourself most editing programs will allow you to take a screen grab of a video frame.

To overlay the play button you can do this in most image editing software. You can find a good selection of play button images on iconfinder.com.

Do contact me if you get stuck!

Filed Under: Email marketing, Video marketing Tagged With: clicks, email marketing, marketing, video, video marketing

Be careful when pre-scheduling your email marketing

April 3, 2013 by Julian Wellings Leave a Comment

Using an email service provider such as Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor is the only way to do your email marketing properly. A useful feature is the ability to prepare your e-shots in advance and schedule them to send on a particular day.

This can be useful if you’re going to be out of the office on the day of send, or if you want to optimise your workflow by preparing content in advance.

However, there is one potential downside to pre-scheduling. By the time your content is sent, it could have become be embarrassing, or at worst insensitive.

Here’s an example from TomTom which proclaims:

Spring has finally sprung! It’s time to head outside and make the most of the warmer weather.
It’s complemented by a nice picture of a car driving past a spring meadow!

The only problem is it was sent on Friday 22nd March 2013, a weekend which saw snow and freezing temperatures across the UK. My guess is it was prepared some time in advance and pre-scheduled.

The red highlighting is mine, for emphasis.

Now, I’m a fan of TomTom’s email marketing, and I’m sure this weather faux pas won’t have done their reputation too much harm!

However, I recommend:

If you are going to pre-schedule your e-shots, check whether there is any content which could potentially cause a problem for you. If so, then it’s worth making a diary note to double check the day before the scheduled send.

Here are some examples:

Weather related content, like the TomTom example above.
Topical content. For example, something relating to the economy where the situation might have changed by the time the email goes out.
Natural disasters or political unrest. For example, a travel company promoting a destination where an earthquake or an uprising has just taken place.

Filed Under: Email marketing Tagged With: content, email marketing, pre-scheduling, video marketing

How to measure video audience retention using YouTube analytics

March 19, 2013 by Julian Wellings Leave a Comment

YouTube has recently introduced a massive improvement to their video analytics. This brings some powerful benefits if your business has videos on YouTube.

You can now monitor how long people watched your videos for.

It’s all very well saying your video got 800 views but what if those viewers stopped watching part way through thus missing out on your key message?

Now you can play the video and view a graph showing exactly which proportion of the audience were watching at any given time. See the example below.

How to view your audience retention

Go to www.youtube.com/analytics and logon to your account.
Click “audience retention” on the left hand side bar.
Then choose your video beneath where it says “content”.
Choose your date range.
Play the video and the red vertical bar will move.

Note: This will only work for videos with more than a few hundred views.

Three tips on how to use this to your advantage:

Analyse where the drop off occurred. What specific content caused people to tune out?
Was your video too long? Could you have got your key messages across in a shorter video?
Use the results to work out what you could do differently next time you produce a video.

Here is an example of the audience retention measure. As you play the video in your YouTube account the vertical bar moves across.

Filed Under: Video marketing, YouTube Tagged With: audience, measuring, video, video marketing, youtube

How to appear authentic on web video

February 20, 2013 by Julian Wellings 1 Comment

camera

If you’re a business owner talking on video you only get one chance to make an impression.

If you’ve put that video on your website it has potential to reach tens of thousands of viewers.

However even the most confident of people can become unnerved at the sight of a video camera. Unfortunately this can mean people come across as a bit ‘wooden’ or even lack authenticity.

Instead of the business owner talking to camera try this.

Film the subject in two way interview style rather than direct to camera. This will ensure the speaker comes across much more naturally and authentically. Interview style is where the subject is looking slightly to one side as if talking to an interviewer.

Treat it as a conversation and ask them some questions. Pause between questions if it helps to calm them, and if they stumble over their words give them time and space to re-do it.

Then edit out the questions and splice the answers together to make a really tight, watchable piece.

Three additional tips:

1. If you’re self-shooting, that is without a presenter/reporter, make sure you position yourself behind the camera so the interviewee has someone to look at.

2. Make sure the eyeline is correct. There’s a useful tutorial on this on the BBC College of Journalism website.

3. Re-frame in between questions with a selection of tight and wide shots. This will avoid jump cuts when you edit our your questions. Another option to avoid jump cuts is to use cutaway shots to cover up the edit points.

Watch this example featuring Nicholas Granger of British Bespoke Auctions. As an auctioneer Nicholas is no stranger to public speaking, but by shooting it in interview style he comes across more naturally and is more animated. Also note how two cutaway shots are used to cover up edit points!

Filed Under: Video marketing Tagged With: presenting, video marketing, web video