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…)

Last month, Bredin Business Information put out a study about the marketing goals of small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). What’s particularly striking about the report, though, is how digital messaging can help these companies reach their goals.

Here’s a look at some of the data offered in the study, and how digital message marketing–emails and text messages that consumers choose to receive–fits into these objectives.

Marketers said their biggest challenges in 2009 include growing business with limited resources (15 percent) and increasing awareness (15 percent). Email and SMS marketing can be very cost-effective, especially with a do-it-yourself system that can tackle several message types with one platform (like mobileStorm’s). So marketers from smaller businesses with limited budgets can easily afford these types of campaigns. Meanwhile, both email and text messages increase brand awareness because they are extremely viral. That is, they are often and easily forwarded from the initial recipient to several new ones–especially if they contain valuable information such as a limited sale or a space on the VIP list for a one-time party.

Retention and acquisition of customers: 48 percent said they are balancing their acquisition and retention efforts this year, 32 percent are concentrating more on acquisition, and 20 percent are focusing more on retention. Digital messages help marketers both acquire and retain customers. A multi-channel campaign draws consumers in–that is, it uses other media to advertise the short code and keyword, or the Web form, for consumers to contact in order to receive texts or emails, respectively. These consumers can be converted when the messages offer coupons, new product announcements, or other information that encourages the sale. Then once these customers see these benefits, they’ll likely continue to patronize the company in question.

Marketers will spend less on market research in 2009 than in 2008. Because of this, marketers will want to do their own research. The right marketing platform will let them do so. It can sort message subscribers according to geographic, demographic, and eve”n psychographic” categories. It can also let the marketer know which campaigns were the most–or least–effective, so that they can improve future campaign efforts. Marketers can thus arm themselves with home-grown research that lets them cater specifically to their own customers, as well as consumers like them who they want to reach.

Seventy-four percent of the world’s digital messages were sent via mobile in January 2009, says TNS Global. Said TNS’ Sam Curtis, “As mobile devices slowly take away usage share from fixed services in developed markets, in emerging markets consumers are more likely to bypass fixed communications altogether and go straight to mobiles.”

That means that to reach a consumer, it’s best to try them on their mobile phones. Of course, you can probably do that with email, since as the report says, 69 percent of North American mobile emailers use the feature daily. The bigger takeaway from this report is the utter reliance that increasingly more consumers have on their phones.

Thus, it’s important to contact consumers using every message type available on a handset–not just email and MIM (mobile instant message), but also SMS. After all, text messaging is something available on the most basic handsets being sold today. So a much larger number of consumers can be reached via SMS than they can with mobile email and MIM, features that require the more advanced smartphone type of handset.

As for consumers who do have smartphones? Why, SMS helps the marketer make a campaign multi-channel. Think about it: Consumers can browse the Internet and read marketing emails on their smartphones; these are great places to put a call-to-action asking them to sign up for promotional text messages, such as mobile coupons.

If marketers don’t have a mobile database, then they’re missing out big-time.