Archive for the ‘Case Studies’ Category
Embedding video into your email – will it work?
Video in email is a common topic of discussion with clients, but it is often shrouded in mystery… will it work? Or won’t it? Which email clients support it and which don’t? Many of us use a static image to link to a YouTube video which is perfectly acceptable, but with the rise of emails being opened on mobile devices and modern browsers, there hasn’t been a better time to actually look at how you could potentially increase engagement by delivering rendered video directly in your email campaigns.
In fact, our latest Campaign of the Month winner did just that.
At Adestra, we partner with VideoEmail by Liveclicker to deliver rich video content into the inbox of your recipients. Importantly, by using VideoEmail, we can assure clients that all mail clients capable of supporting video will render it, while all non-supporting mail clients receive a properly formatted animated .GIF video or a regular image. Currently, B2C mail clients are delivering fully-embedded video within email to 61.4% of all mail recipients on average. B2B mail clients reach 36.7% on average. And that number is continuing to rise.
So exactly which clients can or can’t support embedded video? Lets have a look below…
Mail clients supporting full video w/audio in email:
- All iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), when the email is opened in the native mail client
- Android tablets running Honeycomb (3.x.x) when the email is opened in the native mail client
- Certain Android phones (not all Android phones support embedded video)
- Hotmail (now Outlook.com), when viewed in an HTML5 compliant web browser (IE9+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome, Safari 3.1+, Safari 3+ on iOS, and all Android releases)
- Apple Mail 4
- Outlook for Mac 2011
- Thunderbird
Mail clients that display a silent animated .GIF or animated .PNG in place of video:
- All webmail clients except Hotmail (Outlook.com), when viewed in a desktop browser, including Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL
- Hotmail (Outlook.com), when viewed in Internet Explorer 8 or earlier
- Outlook 2003, 2000, and Outlook Express
- Lotus Notes (all versions)
Mail clients that will display a static image in place of video:
- Outlook 2007 and 2010
- Some Android phones running Gingerbread or earlier (2.3.6 or earlier) or Ice Cream Sandwich (4.x.x)
If you’re thinking about rendering video in your email campaigns, take the time to examine which email clients your recipients are using to view your emails by looking through the email client detection reports. If you are targeting B2B customers with a high number of opens in Outlook 2010, then it’s obvious that the impact you might get from delivering rich video in email is going to be significantly lower than a B2C business hitting a high number of regular mobile openers.
For experience-focused emails, whether it be retail, travel, automotive, event or entertainment sectors, the emphasis on video within email has become more and more popular as businesses start to try and enhance the inbox experience of their recipient. It is especially common to deliver film or video game trailers to an audience of engaged recipients who are also in touch with technology and expect to get the full experience on their mobile device. That instant impact is something which is ever more important in getting users to stay engaged with your brand.
Why not start a conversation today? If you’re an Adestra client, contact your Account Manager to learn more about how video in email can work for you, and what you need to do to get started.
New Year, new mobile optimised template?
With so many people now reading emails on their smartphones, I’m sure you have heard how important it is to ensure that this experience is as optimal as possible for the recipient. If a recipient has to work too hard to find the content of interest within your email, it’s likely they will just give up before finding it.
One of our clients Phil Singer from Oxford University Press, has definitely been listening, because he created the below email so that it renders correctly across desktop, webmail and mobile email clients, giving the recipient a positive experience regardless of the device they are reading the email on.
Click to see full size
Phil achieved this through the use of media queries; media queries allow for a flexible design, which will adapt depending on the size screen a recipient is viewing the email on.
A recent survey by econsultancy, revealed why emails on mobiles were difficult to read;
- Too much scrolling – 42%
- Layout is wrong for mobiles – 29%
- Too much content – 27%
OUP manage to solve all three of these issues with their mobile optimised template;
- Only vertical scrolling is required, as the width of the email has been reduced to the width of the device the recipient is reading on.
- No zooming is required as the text can be easily read at the displayed size.
- Additional images have been removed, again reducing the need for scrolling, plus reducing the file size of the email, meaning that the email can be downloaded quicker on a slow mobile connection.
A full case study on the email can be found here.
If you’re not familiar with media queries, coding or simply don’t have the time our production team can do this for you. For more information contact your account manager.
Jenna Lovell
Senior Account Manager
Integrate social media with your emails for added effect this festive season
Here at Adestra towers most of us seem to be suspiciously well organised with our Christmas shopping, and did well out of Secret Santa last week (with a few notable exceptions!). However, I suspect we might be in the minority. At this time of year everyone is looking for the ‘perfect gift’, so if you have it, let them know! A great way of getting the word out is to use social media in your emails so that your social media campaigns and email marketing is integrated.
Here are a few ideas for getting started on integrating the two:
Include social share links – in MessageFocus these can be added easily using the ‘share link’ button at the top of the new html editor. You can then set this so a recipient of your email has the option to share the whole email, a certain feature in your email, or an alternative URL. Since Pinterest also developed to allow company pages, this can be a great way of generating interest using images of your products.
Of course as well as making the email easy to share, having great content that is worth sharing is also key. Celtic Manor Resort added incentives to encourage people to share their emails (see the case study here) – although in this case the idea was to get more people to sign-up to their emails, the same ideas can be used to encourage social media shares or tweets with certain hash tags.
Other more advanced options include adding an RSS feed to your template that pulls in the latest tweets from your twitter account, keeping your emails looking fresh and up to date. This is a great way of advertising any products or services you offer if they are already being talked about online. If you would like more information on this, contact your account manager.
Using social media in your emails goes beyond 25th December, too – getting the news out about winter/January sales by using email and social media can be just as effective.
Have a wonderful festive season and see you again in the New Year!
Embedding video into your email – will it work?
Video in email is a common topic of discussion with clients, but it is often shrouded in mystery… will it work? Or won’t it? Which email clients support it and which don’t? Many of us use a static image to link to a YouTube video which is perfectly acceptable, but with the rise of emails being opened on mobile devices and modern browsers, there hasn’t been a better time to actually look at how you could potentially increase engagement by delivering rendered video directly in your email campaigns.
In fact, our latest Campaign of the Month winner did just that.
At Adestra, we partner with VideoEmail by Liveclicker to deliver rich video content into the inbox of your recipients. Importantly, by using VideoEmail, we can assure clients that all mail clients capable of supporting video will render it, while all non-supporting mail clients receive a properly formatted animated .GIF video or a regular image. Currently, B2C mail clients are delivering fully-embedded video within email to 61.4% of all mail recipients on average. B2B mail clients reach 36.7% on average. And that number is continuing to rise.
So exactly which clients can or can’t support embedded video? Lets have a look below…
Mail clients supporting full video w/audio in email:
- All iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), when the email is opened in the native mail client
- Android tablets running Honeycomb (3.x.x) when the email is opened in the native mail client
- Certain Android phones (not all Android phones support embedded video)
- Hotmail (now Outlook.com), when viewed in an HTML5 compliant web browser (IE9+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome, Safari 3.1+, Safari 3+ on iOS, and all Android releases)
- Apple Mail 4
- Outlook for Mac 2011
- Thunderbird
Mail clients that display a silent animated .GIF or animated .PNG in place of video:
- All webmail clients except Hotmail (Outlook.com), when viewed in a desktop browser, including Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL
- Hotmail (Outlook.com), when viewed in Internet Explorer 8 or earlier
- Outlook 2003, 2000, and Outlook Express
- Lotus Notes (all versions)
Mail clients that will display a static image in place of video:
- Outlook 2007 and 2010
- Some Android phones running Gingerbread or earlier (2.3.6 or earlier) or Ice Cream Sandwich (4.x.x)
If you’re thinking about rendering video in your email campaigns, take the time to examine which email clients your recipients are using to view your emails by looking through the email client detection reports. If you are targeting B2B customers with a high number of opens in Outlook 2010, then it’s obvious that the impact you might get from delivering rich video in email is going to be significantly lower than a B2C business hitting a high number of regular mobile openers.
For experience-focused emails, whether it be retail, travel, automotive, event or entertainment sectors, the emphasis on video within email has become more and more popular as businesses start to try and enhance the inbox experience of their recipient. It is especially common to deliver film or video game trailers to an audience of engaged recipients who are also in touch with technology and expect to get the full experience on their mobile device. That instant impact is something which is ever more important in getting users to stay engaged with your brand.
Why not start a conversation today? If you’re an Adestra client, contact your Account Manager to learn more about how video in email can work for you, and what you need to do to get started.
New Year, new mobile optimised template?
With so many people now reading emails on their smartphones, I’m sure you have heard how important it is to ensure that this experience is as optimal as possible for the recipient. If a recipient has to work too hard to find the content of interest within your email, it’s likely they will just give up before finding it.
One of our clients Phil Singer from Oxford University Press, has definitely been listening, because he created the below email so that it renders correctly across desktop, webmail and mobile email clients, giving the recipient a positive experience regardless of the device they are reading the email on.
Click to see full size
Phil achieved this through the use of media queries; media queries allow for a flexible design, which will adapt depending on the size screen a recipient is viewing the email on.
A recent survey by econsultancy, revealed why emails on mobiles were difficult to read;
- Too much scrolling – 42%
- Layout is wrong for mobiles – 29%
- Too much content – 27%
OUP manage to solve all three of these issues with their mobile optimised template;
- Only vertical scrolling is required, as the width of the email has been reduced to the width of the device the recipient is reading on.
- No zooming is required as the text can be easily read at the displayed size.
- Additional images have been removed, again reducing the need for scrolling, plus reducing the file size of the email, meaning that the email can be downloaded quicker on a slow mobile connection.
A full case study on the email can be found here.
If you’re not familiar with media queries, coding or simply don’t have the time our production team can do this for you. For more information contact your account manager.
Jenna Lovell
Senior Account Manager
Integrate social media with your emails for added effect this festive season
Here at Adestra towers most of us seem to be suspiciously well organised with our Christmas shopping, and did well out of Secret Santa last week (with a few notable exceptions!). However, I suspect we might be in the minority. At this time of year everyone is looking for the ‘perfect gift’, so if you have it, let them know! A great way of getting the word out is to use social media in your emails so that your social media campaigns and email marketing is integrated.
Here are a few ideas for getting started on integrating the two:
Include social share links – in MessageFocus these can be added easily using the ‘share link’ button at the top of the new html editor. You can then set this so a recipient of your email has the option to share the whole email, a certain feature in your email, or an alternative URL. Since Pinterest also developed to allow company pages, this can be a great way of generating interest using images of your products.
Of course as well as making the email easy to share, having great content that is worth sharing is also key. Celtic Manor Resort added incentives to encourage people to share their emails (see the case study here) – although in this case the idea was to get more people to sign-up to their emails, the same ideas can be used to encourage social media shares or tweets with certain hash tags.
Other more advanced options include adding an RSS feed to your template that pulls in the latest tweets from your twitter account, keeping your emails looking fresh and up to date. This is a great way of advertising any products or services you offer if they are already being talked about online. If you would like more information on this, contact your account manager.
Using social media in your emails goes beyond 25th December, too – getting the news out about winter/January sales by using email and social media can be just as effective.
Have a wonderful festive season and see you again in the New Year!