Google announced last week that Gmail will begin displaying images by default in your emails viewed on desktops. The change to IOS and Android Gmail apps will be rolled out in “early 2014″. For email marketers and especially those who use video email, this change in Gmail is significant and will have major consequences on open rates and video email in 2014.
Using Video Email in Email Marketing Until Now![Video email in 2014]()
We have previously documented how video email can double your CTR for your email marketing campaigns. However, there has always been the downside of having your video email image “blocked” by the user’s email client. When an image is blocked, users must choose to display the images in order to see them. While the reason for this was security, practically it meant that many video email marketing opportunities were lost by forcing users to “opt in” to your images. As Gmail claims to be the largest online email service provider, this was a major deterrent to using video email
From Opt In to Opt Out
Gmail has recently made changes so that all images will be served through Google’s own secure proxy servers. This means that Google will be responsible for the security of all images, hence images can be displayed safely. People who don’t want to see images will be allowed to turn images off but that will require user’s to “opt out” of images. Practically speaking this means that people who worried that there images wont display on Gmail need not worry anymore.
Best Practices For Video Email
Now that video email will appear in Gmail, what is the best way to insure that your video is seen? The most important factor is to make sure you have an attractive thumbnail for your video so people will be interested in seeing it. It is better to place your video towards the beginning of your email as that will insure that people who open your email will see your video. Finally, make sure to add a call to action to the video itself in order to insure that those who see your video will know what to do next. By following these steps, you will insure that video email will become an important tool in your email marketing efforts.
