Last week, I explained that videos and email marketing messages go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Click-through rates for marketing emails increase two or three times with the inclusion of video! This is in part because increasingly larger numbers of consumers (we’re talking trillions!) want to spend time watching online video, and also because it’s becoming easier for them to watch videos sent via email.

Today, I’ll offer some tips on how marketers can create videos that consumers will want to receive via email and watch online. I’ll aso explain explain how marketers can analyze the results of their video email marketing campaigns with mobileStorm’s technology.

Because some companies might not have tried their hand at creating videos, here are some things we at mobileStorm learned while making our online commercials and comedy shows.

• Online video is not the same as a feature-length movie or network TV show. Its purpose is to quickly pique interest in a brand. Thus, it should start off with a “bang” and not be much longer than a few minutes.
• Links should either lead to a video posted on a site like YouTube or MySpace, or else should lead to specially-designed landing pages. Never use embedded video in email!
• Providing your video in the smallest file size possible, but still retaining a satisfactory image quality, is part of best practices for all Internet video. Flash compression is often the best comproise of file size and quality, making it ideal for online media.

Once you’ve deployed a video email marketing campaign, you need to determine how well it did. (more…)

mobileStorm’s six messaging types for marketers are all conducive to our stance that multi-channel campaigns are best. We’ve also long suggested that marketers be multi-channel within a single message–for example, by including video in an email marketing message, which engages the recipient and also makes the message viral.

We’re so forward-thinking that it’s only been recently that the rest of the marketing industry has caught up, and realized that–like chocolate and peanut butter–video and email can be combined into one message to really entice consumers. Two great tastes taste great together, indeed!

• According to analyst David Daniels at Forrester Research, putting a video link within an email, such as a clickable screen shot, “can increase click-through rates by two to three times.”
• Mr. Daniels also notes in his recent report that between July 2008 and July 2009, 17 percent of marketing executives surveyed planned to use video in email. Marketers are getting competitive with video email!
• Meanwhile, Nielsen Online reported that in April of this year, 119 billion unique viewers watched 7 trillion total streams during the month; total streams were up 24 percent from a year ago, while streams-per-viewer are up 27 percent and time-per-viewer is up 58 percent. Consumers love watching online video!
• Technological advances make viewing video in an email more seamless for the consumer. For example, Gmail Labs now has a feature that allows users to turn on previews of YouTube videos. Once consumers set this on their accounts, they’re able to watch YouTube videos from inside the email message. As word spreads, marketers will reach increasingly more Gmail users with video emails!

So savvy marketers will want to beat the competition before it beats them. This requires them to: (1) post videos where they can easily be found, and (2) incorporate video into their email marketing messages. This may be easier said than done, but with mobileStorm’s technology and expertise, it’ll still be relatively easy. (more…)

(The following comes from Forrest Knighton, Senior Account and Support Manager, mobileStorm Inc.)

Leading the pack in multi-modal messaging platforms for small to medium-sized businesses, mobileStorm announces a highly unique plan to bring wireless messaging to every household in the United States, using a controversial but highly effective method of data transfer.

Going against conventional electronic means of sending messages, mobileStorm will do what one analyst considers “a brilliant yet risky move in a highly competitive and volatile marketplace”: Using winged creatures commonly called “birds,” mobileStorm will start offering a seventh messaging type which allows select clients to attach hand-written messages to a ‘bird’ via a small papyrus scroll.

These birds—specifically, carrier pigeons—have the ability to cross vast distances in short periods of time, with no loss of data, no server errors, no bounce backs, and no unsolicited messaging, said mobileStorm CEO and founder Jared Reitzin. Dubbed MobileStork 2.2, the service allows messages of up to three pages in length to be fastened on the legs of the birds, using the company’s proprietary leg taping system called Leg Attached Messaging Envelope—also known as LAME.

“We believe that people around the globe will quickly adopt this LAME technology, as it requires very little in the way of additional hardware or systems integration,” said Mr. Reitzin. “All you really need is a five-pound bag of birdseed, and you don’t need to know HTML to get one of those.”

Mr. Reitzin began experimenting with birds after he observed one carrying a large and expensive koi fish from his backyard pond. His early attempts failed, however, because of his initial use of the hummingbird as the primary message carrier.

“Now that we’ve just about perfected MobileStork, and have flight plans logged in nearly every major American city, we realize that we have the potential to possibly knock Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon right out of the wireless marketplace,” Mr. Reitzin said.

-Forrest Knighton, Senior Account and Support Manager, mobileStorm Inc.

Some marketers have only recently realized the importance of email. Others think it’s old hat. But true forward-thinkers are already taking their campaigns to the next level.

A business blogger at the Sydney Morning Herald points out a particular email discussion that happened at the Adtech conference held in Sydney this week, regarding “trigger-based” messages. Trigger-based email is sent according to a consumer’s particular behavior or preferences. For example, in an emailed company newsletter, there might be a link about a particular product. When the reader clicks on that link, this then triggers another email sent to the customer, offering a special sales offer regarding that product. Such links don’t have to be about a company’s product; a consumer’s birthday or purchasing preferences are other types of triggers.

Trigger-based messages, then, ensure that a brand remains engaged with and relevant to consumers by giving them important updates. The Herald blog points to HSBC Bank in Australia, which used trigger-based email marketing “to keep consumers engaged and informed” during their loan application process. This was done because many loan applicants shop around with several banks, and HSBC did not want them to go elsewhere for their loans. The upshot? HSBC Bank saw an approximately 65 percent improvement in acceptance of home loans.

Think of trigger-based email as the master’s degree after getting a bachelor degree in email marketing: The rules of email marketing best practices must foremost be understood and used. The customer must be the one to subscribe to get email messages, and the company must explain what to expect in these messages–as well as how often to expect them. As always, relevance is the key–if you start sending messages of the type that were not expected, the consumer might ignore your email and/or cancel the subscription.

Of course, trigger-based messaging can only work if the marketer really knows the customer. So it’s important to use an email-sending platform that will gather certain information, both demographic and “psychographic,” into a user-friendly database. Once such a database is compiled, the marketer can start creating triggers based on consumers’ preferences and personal profiles. (And maybe this database creation can be accelerated by using a product-click triggered email campaign first.)

Clearly, marketers who aren’t yet in email had better get cracking. Their competitors have already mastered the basics!