It’s said that the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. That’s why we all prefer videos over text. So much so, that an average consumer spends at least 6 hours a week watching some form of video content. It has become a powerful tool to educate, communicate and entertain people of all ages. This explains why many leading businesses started using videos for promotional activities decades ago.

It’s interesting to note that currently, more than 80% of businesses use videos in their marketing strategies

As more and more marketers understand the impact video content has on consumers, they’ve started looking for ways to take things a step further and use videos in their email marketing campaigns as well. 

When we think about it, it definitely seems like a promising idea and sounds simple. 

However, in reality, sending video emails is quite a tricky task. There are quite a few challenges that users face while trying to send videos via email. Some of the commonly faced challenges are stated below.

1. Most of the popular email service providers like Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo don’t support embedded videos
2. Gmail doesn’t allow users to attach files that are larger than 25 MB.

Even though there are a few limitations, there are a few options we can try to make this work! You can now learn how to send videos in Gmail by just following the simple instructions discussed in the post. 

Here are the topics that are covered in the post.

1. Learn how to send a video through Email using Vmaker 
2. Learn how to send a video through Email using the (Thumbnail/Gif + hyperlink) method 
3. Learn how to send a video through Email using Google Drive

Before we get into the details of how to send videos in Gmail using Vmaker, let’s clearly understand what Vmaker is and how it can help us?

Vmaker is a screen and webcam recording software that can be installed as a Chrome extension. 

While using Vmaker, you needn’t worry about searching for a hosting platform to host the recorded videos as Vmaker recordings can easily be hosted on its own platform. As an additional bonus, it also displays the number of hits a video gets to help content creators keep a track of the number of views. This feature will be of great help to marketers as they can easily track and strategise their marketing campaigns effectively. 

Now that you have an understanding about Vmaker, let’s dive in and learn how to send videos in Gmail in a simple 5 step process. 

Step 1: Download the Chrome extension

The first step is to install Vmaker’s chrome extension to your browser. So, head over to the ‘Chrome Web Store‘ and add the Chrome extension to your browser and pin it. This helps you access the video recorder with just a single click and allows you to record across various tabs and windows easily. 

Step 2: Sign up for Vmaker

The next step ahead is to register and create your account. Once you’ve created your account, you can easily start recording whenever you want by just clicking on the Vmaker extension. All the videos recorded will automatically be saved in your dashboard. 

Step 3: Record a new video or insert a recent recording in Gmail

The next step in this process is to attach the video to the body of your email. In order to do this, head over to Gmail and click on the ‘Compose’ tab. Once you open your email window, you’d be able to find the ‘Vmaker icon’ next to the ‘Send’ button. When you click on the icon, you’d be asked to choose between two options. 

• Record a new video 
• Insert the last recording 

i) Record a new video: If you haven’t yet recorded the video, choose the ‘Record a new video’ option and start recording your video. 

Once you are done recording the video, you can click on ‘Stop Sharing’ to stop the video. Now, you will be directed to a pop-up box where you will have to fill in the title of your video. 

Fill in the video title and click on ‘Insert Recording’ to proceed further. 

ii) Insert last recording: If you’d like to attach a recent recording, select the ‘Insert last recording’ option and add it to your email. 

If you’d like to change the name of your recording, click on the video recording, choose ‘Change’ and change the title of your video to your preference. 

Note: Make sure you also add a catchy CTA and hyperlink it to the video. This helps recipients click on the video in case they skimmed through the video link. 

That’s it. You are now free to ‘Share’ your email. When the recipients click on the video, they will be directed to the original video.

This option is the most commonly used option by marketers and gives recipients a clear idea that there’s a video attached in the body of the email. 

In this method, you are just going to attach the image or gif to the body of your email and hyperlink it to the original recording. Attaching gifs to your email gives the recipients a small sneak peek about the video and entices them to click on it.

However, be mindful that if the email contains too many links or large attachments, it might be flagged by the Gmail spam filter, reducing the chances of it reaching your recipient’s inbox.

i) Image + Hyperlink 

If you’re looking forward to adding an image, you can easily take a screenshot of your video thumbnail with a play button and attach it to the body of your email. Adding a play button sends a signal to your recipients that there’s a video attached and will make them click on the video. 

Follow these three simple steps to get your job done. 

Step 1: Add the screenshot (video thumbnail) to the body of your email as you usually do by clicking on the ‘Insert photo’ icon. 

Step 2: Once you’ve added the image, you can select the image and hyperlink it to your recording. 

You will be directed to a pop-up box where you will have to enter the video title and web address (URL of your video recording). Fill in the necessary details and click ‘OK’. 

Step 3: You can now write the body of your email, add a catchy CTA and click on ‘Send’.

ii) Gif + Hyperlink

If you’re choosing this method, you can simply record a few seconds of your video as a gif, and add that to the body of your email. Then, you can proceed to hyperlink it to the original recording as we did earlier. 

There are quite a few gif recorders available online for free. You can use any one of those or simply use Vmaker. 

We take you through this example with the help of Vmaker as it allows us to capture gifs for free and is watermark-free. Without further ado, let’s go through the steps in detail. 

Step 1: Start by recording a few seconds of your video using the Vmaker screen recorder. In order to do this, sign up and register for Vmaker and install the application as a Chrome extension. Now, you can start recording the best portions of your video that you’d like to add as a gif for the email. Once you are done with recording, you can access the recording from Vmaker’s dashboard and edit it. 

Step 2: Edit the unnecessary sections of your video or enhance you video, just click on the ‘Edit’ option in the dashboard and start editing using Vmaker AI video editor.

Note: An appropriate length for the Gif teaser would be 7 – 8 seconds. 

Step 3: You can now head over to your Gmail account and click on the Vmaker icon in your email window. Select the ‘Insert last recording’ option and insert the gif recording to the body of your email.

Step 4: Now, you can select the gif recording and hyperlink it to the original video recording.

Make sure you enter all the necessary details like video title, website URL (link of the original video recording), etc. 

When the recipients click on the gif, they will be directed to the original video recording.

Step 5: Add a catchy CTA and link it to your original recording. This helps recipients click on the link in case they missed clicking on the video. 

This is the last method on our list. We all know that Gmail doesn’t allow its users to share files that exceed the 25 MB mark. So, people use this method as an alternative while they try to send large files. 

If you choose to follow this method, you should be aware of the fact that you can’t add images or gifs to the video.

In order to add videos as an attachment from your drive, follow these simple steps. 

Step 1: Upload your video from your computer to your drive

Step 2: Head over to Gmail, click on ‘Compose’ and select the Drive icon to insert files from your drive to the body of your email. 

Step 3: Once the video has been uploaded, add the CTA and other necessary details and click on ‘Send’. 

If none of the above tricks works for you, as a last resort, you can try to copy-paste the URL in the body of your email. While you do this, Gmail automatically displays the thumbnail of your video as an attached document in the email. While it informs recipients that there’s a video attached, it’s also worth noting that it isn’t the best option available out there.

That’s it. We shared the three best approaches we use while sending video emails with you. 

So, what more are you waiting for? 

Now that you’ve learnt how to send videos in Gmail in simple steps, choose any one of the approaches that suit your requirements and start sending those video emails!

Recommended Reads

• Everything You Need to Know About Video Emails to Win New Businesses
• Top Video Email Platforms Ranked
• Learn How To Send Videos via Email

Videos make things easier to consume. People tend to retain more information from what they see and hear compared to what they read.

The growth in consumption and the added benefit of retention capability have made videos a go-to content format for businesses today.

Today, videos are being used in marketing, sales, customer support, and even in internal team communication.

The shift in work culture due to the pandemic has fuelled the growth of this adoption at a faster pace.

Even with all these advantages, videos are still not used to their optimum potential and we are still working on this goal each day.

Video Emails

Video emails are usually emails that carry videos. The above introduction has shared the understanding of how videos are flaring far better than other content types today.

Yet, the distribution of videos has not been easy. The video formats, length, hosting will all affect the consumption of videos.

Emails of all this is one channel that has benefitted by the inclusion of videos.

Though you cannot embed videos directly to your emails, there are still other ways to use emails as a channel to distribute your videos.

Choosing a video email platform is tricky since they solve a piece of your overall marketing puzzle and hence they should gel well with other platforms in use.

Apart from this, there are a few parameters you should consider while choosing your video email platform.

Video Creation

Video creation covers the initial recording part of the videos. The platform should allow you to record and edit videos seamlessly.

For example, Vmaker comes with a mac application and a chrome extension to record your videos on the go. The dashboard is maintained in the cloud to help you access all your recordings from anywhere.

The platform should also allow you to use an external mic or camera without any complexity.

Video Production

Any activity that drives friction will not be carried out efficiently. With video creation, you need to be as friction-free as possible.

Make sure the platform comes in with an inbuilt editor that can help you do the basic editing to your recorded videos without having to look for an external tool.

The process should be simple and should not require a tech-savvy person to oversee the same.

Video Hosting and Analytics

Instead of YouTube or Vimeo, if you can get free hosting with the platform you can save more $. The hosting should allow unlimited streaming at a higher bit rate to offer a great viewing experience.

Video analytics will help you measure engagement with the video. A list of anonymous views and inhouse view segregation will help in each campaign to personalize the follow-ups.

Here are some of the top platforms you can check out to improve your video email game this year. Each platform has its own merit and they serve a specific purpose. Whether it is nurturing, prospecting, or customer support – you will find the right platform below.

We have to top the list with Vmaker for obvious reasons. Vmaker is a webcam and screen recording tool that can help you record and send personalized videos over email.

Ranked by G2 as a High performer in their summer report, Vmaker has been widely used by Content creators, Sales and Marketing professionals, and YouTubers.

Vmaker helps you with the following benefits:

• Native Gmail integration to record or send recordings from your email compose tab
• You can record, edit and host videos with your custom branded player page
• Collaborative work option with your team
• Add a custom Call-to-Action button on your video player page
• Unlimited cloud storage

These are a few options of the major chunk that makes Vmaker stand out from the crowd. The fact that you can use the free version to record videos at 720P with an unlimited number of recordings makes it the first choice to give it a try.

The paid plans start at $7 and the teams plan starts at $10.

VideoPeel is an online video platform to generate social proof such as customer testimonials, and success stories in the form of videos.

It allows you to receive video testimonials from your clients and share them to your audience via your website or other communication platforms.

The pricing for VideoPeel is not available directly on their website. But going by external sources, the pricing starts at $69 per month.

HippoVideo is an online video personalization platform. This is primarily used by sales professionals in prospecting scenarios to send personalized videos to their email list at scale.

The platform allows you to record, edit, and personalized videos based on custom variables.

The pricing for the platform starts at $15 per month.

VideoAsk is a new name in the block introduced by the famous experience management platform Typeform.

VideoAsk allows you to customize all client communications with videos. Be it emails, website chat, or testimonials, you can customize the entire communication via videos.

Customers or users have the option to engage back using videos or by using text.

The platform is majorly used in the customer relationship segment to create a personalized appeal in communication.

The Grow plan with VideoAsk starts at $24 and the Brand plan starts at $40 when you bill yearly.

Adilo is primarily a video hosting platform that also allows you to record, play and analyze the videos.

Focused on creating more engagement and closing more sales with videos, Adilo allows you to record and host 4K videos, podcasts, upload external videos, and more.

The basic plan for Adilo starts at $29 a month and the growth and unlimited plans start at $49 and $149 respectively.

Sendspark is a video recording platform that allows you to record and send videos over email. They find their application across sales, marketing, and customer success roles.

Sendspark can be integrated with some of the top email platforms such as Outreach, Hubspot, Outlook, Gmail, and more.

The application comes in the form of a chrome extension and the pricing starts at $12 for pro plan and $15 for a business plan when billed annually.

Vidyard is a video platform that powers virtual selling. It helps you to record and share videos with your prospects on sales pitches, proposals, demos, and more.

The platform comes in with video recording, hosting, personalization, and analytics options.

The pricing for the same starts at $15/mo for pro plan and the teams plan at $300 per month.

Dubb is an online video communication platform that allows you to send video messages to drive more engagement and conversions.

Dubb is poised to replace text messages with video messages across all communication platforms such as email, website chat, messengers, etc.

With Dubb, you can create videos and embed them on your landing pages to drive more engagement. Dubb also offers contact level tracking to personalize follow-ups.

The pricing starts at $32 for the pro plan and $80 for the annual plan.

BombBomb is an upcoming popular name amongst video platforms to utilize the power of video emails. 

Poised to improve the customer engagement with the power of videos, their video platform pricing starts at $29/mo, and the plus plan starts at $49/month. 

Bomb Bomb is widely preferred to improve sales, customer experience, and for internal communication. 

EasySendy Pro is a video email marketing platform that integrates all your various marketing channels and accelerates traffic and conversion rate.

Using EasySendy, You can easily create and send personalized video content via Email on a scale to capture the recipient’s attention.

You can also create and push successful campaigns through different SMTP relays like Amazon SES, Mandrill, SendGrid, Sparkpost, Leadersend, MailGun, SendinBlue, and more.

Get Started with video emails

Video emails tend to work wonders if you play them with the right mix. You have to find the right proportions of content, video production, tools, and the right CTA. 

If you can nail this mix right you will see a 3X jump in results right away. 

Get started with Vmaker for your video emails and try our all-in-one record, edit, host, and share functionality to create and share videos on the scale.

If you enjoyed reading the above article, then here are a few cherry-picked ones you might be interested in reading further!

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Video Emails: How to Send a Video via Email

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Adding videos to your emails is a great way to boost your email engagement. It has proven to improve the email metrics overall and help meet the end goals.

We can conclude mutually that adding videos to your email is a good idea, but email senders do not usually allow you to embed videos to emails. This is to avoid spam and increase the deliverability rate.

Saying that I have listed a few options on how to send videos through email to get the best results.

In addition, I have also added some of the best practices to follow while sending videos through emails to maximize your email engagement.

You can always use the Vmaker chrome extension to quickly create or insert your videos through your Gmail compose tab.

Of all the types of emails that are being sent, video emails have proven to bring home the most engagement than their counterparts.

With videos, you give the user a chance to watch the content or read the content. People love having limited choices and the luxury to choose.

Videos also help you add a face to the thumbnail and create a personalized touch to your content. People love talking to people more than to brand names.

When you get a few seconds of your reader’s time you want to leave a lasting impression and videos help you do that.

So, how do you send videos through your email?

Do you embed them or send just the links?

Do you work on the thumbnail and what if the thumbnail preview is disabled?

Will your email be blocked by spam filters? If so, how to avoid them?

These are some of the questions I have tried answering in the below lines, read on to find out.

As I mentioned earlier, most platforms such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc. do not support native video embed options. It makes sense from their end when they want to maximize email deliverability.

But from your end, you need to maximize the user experience when they engage with your email.

I have listed a few options below to balance out both ends – Sending videos in your email without hurting the deliverability rate.

Using Vmaker is one of the easiest ways to record or send one of your recordings to your audience via email.

You can use the Vmaker chrome extension. Once you have installed it, open the chrome compose tab in your Gmail.

Once you have opened you will see the Vmaker logo right next to the send button.

Click on the logo and choose either of the options suggested. If you are using it for the first time, choose the record video option. If you have already recorded your video, you can choose the insert video option.

Once you are done recording, the video is automatically hosted on our platform and the link will be added to the email with the thumbnail.

When people click on the link they will be redirected to the player page where they can watch the video.

This option is the best if you are someone who loves to improve the email engagement in one on one videos.

Bonus Tip

If you are using Vmaker and sending videos in one on one emails, you can have a better hold of the analytics.

When you go to your player page, you can watch the video analytics where you can see how many people have watched your video.

This will give you a confirmation on whether people have seen your video or not.

This is one of the most used methods and an easy way to send videos through your email. It is the one to go for if you are adding videos as a part of your email automation.

In this method, you will add a video as a hyperlink to your video thumbnail image attached to the email with a play button.

When people click on that image, they will be taken to the video platform where they can watch the video.

Follow the below steps to embed videos using the thumbnail method

1. Record a video and host it on a platform. If you are using Vmaker, it will be posted to our platform automatically and you can copy the video link
2. Create a thumbnail image for your video
3. Add the thumbnail image to your email compose section
4. Right-click on the thumbnail image and insert your video link
5. You are all set to go

When people click on the image, it will take them to the video player page on Vmaker or YouTube or wherever you have hosted the video and they can play the video from there.

Bonus Tip

If you use Vmaker for your videos, you have the option of custom branding. With custom branding, you can add a Call to Action button to the player page.

This allows you to have a video landing page with your own logo and brand colors. 

This again improves conversion by paving the way for your audience to take an action from the same page after watching the video.

Embedding emails using the HTML5 code snippet delivers the best user experience. Why? Because it allows the reader to play the video within the email.

Ask any marketer, they will tell you that the more you reduce the number of clicks the better the chances of conversion.

But, why aren’t people using this option and why am I suggesting this at the end?

Well, for all unfortunate reasons, not every platform supports the HTML5 email embed option. There are only a handful of platforms that allow you to embed and play embedded videos.

This means if your reader is not viewing the email in one of the supported platforms, then they will not be able to watch the video spoiling the mission.

Below is the list of platforms that support HTML5 video email embed

While it offers the best user experience, it has a higher risk in deliverability and this is the reason most video email software are not supporting the system today.

You can check this link to find the detailed instructions and embed codes to embed a video natively to the platform.

Attaching a direct YouTube URL is another method but I won’t recommend that again. If you just attach a YouTube URL to your email, then Gmail by default creates a preview of the thumbnail to the attachment section.

This is a better option compared to attaching a Google drive link – which won’t create any preview.

But you have to catch the attention of the user without having them scroll to the end.

Plus having the thumbnail+image option will help you create a better appeal in the initial frame and leads to better engagement.

Best practices to improve your video email engagement

Adding videos to your email is the first part of the job. To ensure successful engagement, you need to work on other aspects of the emails.

Here are some points to improve your video email engagement.

• Use the word ‘video’ in your subject line. This has been statistically shown to improve the open rate of emails.
• Add your video with context. Don’t send them just the video, instead of adding some context in the text mentioning what the video is about and what can they expect once they click to watch the video
• Explain what happens when they click. This is important. If your link will take them to an external link then do mention what happens once the user clicks on the link. Whether the video plays there or if it takes them to an external site, or should check the video attached at the end of the email.
• Analyze the time to send the video. Make sure you run some experiments to find the optimum time for engagement. You are shooting a killer arrow and you don’t wanna fire it in the dark.
• Test the email before you spend – Test the email by sending test emails to multiple email domains and checking the preview in multiple email tools such as a mobile, desktop, tablet, and in software such as Gmail, Outlook, and others.

If you nail this down, you will see a green curve soaring in the weekly email report.

To ensure high deliverability and security of your emails, consider implementing a DMARC setup. DMARC helps protect your domain from being used in phishing and spoofing attacks, thereby improving the chances that your video emails will reach your audience without being marked as spam.

Try Vmaker for Free

If you are looking for an easy solution to record and add videos to your emails, you should give Vmaker a try.

It helps you to record and add videos from your Gmail application (more integrations are on the way).

You can also record your video via the app, edit them with external videos and audio and then insert the recording into your emails.

It makes the process complete by supporting with video analytics and the option to add a CTA to the player page making your audience take the next action right after watching the video.

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