How to Add a Video to an Email
Including a video inside your email messages is a great way to stand out in your client’s email inbox.
Seeing a video in an email can quickly capture your reader’s attention. When someone sees a video thumbnail, it encourages them to stop what they are doing and click play.
We love watching videos because no other medium can as quickly or effectively communicate information. A video inside of an email is a great way for your customers to connect with you on a personal level.
Here are just some of the benefits for including a video inside an email message:
- Helps your emails be more engaging – your email messages stand out from the crowd
- Saves time – it’s much easier to watch a video than read a lot of text
- Allows you to more easily convey information – videos engage multiple senses, allowing us to process the content more easily.
Vidyard: Easiest Tool to Create Videos for Emails
If you are considering using video in your email messages, Vidyard is the easiest peasiest program we know to get the job done.
Vidyard is not only easy to use, but it’s got a Free Forever plan. How sweet is that? We love free.
3 Different Recording Options
In their free plan, Vidyard gives you three options for recording your videos:
1. Record your screen
2. Record webcam
3. Record screen + webcam together
BONUS: You can even upload a video that you’ve already made. Nice!
The folks at Vidyard are extremely generous. They allow you to store and share an unlimited number of videos. Wow folks. It doesn’t get better than that.
Best of all, with Vidyard your videos are protected. When they are stored in Vidyard’s cloud they are view only. No need to worry about rogue viewers downloading your video creations.
To get started with using Vidyard, all you need to do is signup for a free account and install the Google Chrome extension. Installing the Chrome extension, is easy to do. Just visit the Chrome Store and search for the Vidyard extension.
But, if you’d like a little help, we walk you through how to do that in our YouTube video below.
Learn How to Add Videos to Your Emails With Vidyard
If you’d like to learn how to use Vidyard to record and add a video to your email messages, watch the YouTube tutorial below. We also show you how to install the Chrome Extension… just in case you need a little extra help.
BONUS: To save you from having to take any notes, we’re also enclosing a complete transcription of the entire video. The transcription can be found directly below the YouTube. Simply scroll on down and you’ll see it.
YouTube Video – Complete Transcript
Today I’m going to walk you through a program that I love to use to create videos to go inside your emails. And this is a really great way to get personal with your clients and let them know a little bit about you. And just sometimes you know you have a lot to say and it’s long and dull and dry to try and type all that into an email. And a quick video could get to the point and just do so much more for your relationship with your clients. So I’m going to show you a great tool that I like to use called Vidyard.
So first of all here’s Vidyard here.What you want to do is you’re going to need to sign up for an account. Doesn’t cost you anything. This is a free program. To get started, they have a free foreverplan. If you like Vidyard and it does all sorts of other thing, highly recommend this. This is a great great program. But for just doing what we’re doing today you don’t even you don’t need to pay a penny. Just get a free account.
So I’m gonna go ahead and I already have an account. I’m already logged in, but you need to have the Chrome extension before you get going with this. And it’s really easy in order to get the Chrome extension. All you have to do is you have to go ahead and click this button and it will tell you how to do it.
So it says to add the Vidyard extension just search for Vidyard in the Chrome Store. So here it is. Add it to Chrome. Yes. And boom there we go. It is now on my, it’s right here now. Move it right to the front, right up at the front. So there he is. Okay so that’s all you need to get cracking to install this. Honestly easy peasy.
So let’s go ahead and make a video to put into a email. So all I need to do is click on the little cricket guy here. So it’s the Chrome extension and then I have a choice I can be making a video of my your screen, so that might be good for onboarding, if you’re trying to teach somebody how to use something. An application that you have, or you’re walking through a program that you want them to see on your screen.
But for this demonstration I want to do a cam video, which means that it’s going to take a picture of me. And that’s what we’re going to use to do that and in order to do that all I have to do is click the record button. Now there I am. So now it’s recording. Gives you like a little bit of a countdown so you can get ready and then you see here at the bottom that the time that’s going by. So of course this is kind of messing it all up by talking to you so much. But that’s okay.
So see for instance we’ll just start from here and actually I’ll show you how to trim it later because this is obviously a good point. So here we are let me start.
Hi this is Gillian with Launch4Life. I’m so happy that you have booked an appointment for a 15 minute consult. Just wanted to give you a heads up that I’d love if you could just go ahead and go through our client questionnaire, so that we can learn little bit about you before we get on the call. That way we can have a chance to do some homework and know about your business and the services that you provide and maybe what your website looks like before we even get on the call. That way we will have a jam-packed session in 15 minutes. Instead of getting all that information then I can give you some constructive feedback on how we can work with you. Looking forward to our appointment talk soon.
Okay and now my video is ready and if I push play. Now it’s recording gives you like a little bit of a countdown so you can get ready and then you see here at the bottom… And what’s nice is I can go ahead and give my video a title. So it’s just gonna give always standard vidyard recording but if i want to give it a personal title I could say thank you for booking an appointment with Launch4Life. There we go we’ve got a title.
Now if i want to trim this because obviously i talked too much in the beginning. All I need to do is look at this and figure out where do I want to start.The time that’s going by so of course but that’s ok. So see for instance we’ll just start from here and actually I’ll show you how to trim it later because this is obviously a good point.
So let’s go back a little bit. Let me start. So if I say this is where I would like to trim. So I want to drag the handle to where I want it to start. So let’s see if that works.
Hi this is Gillian with…
So see it cut off all this nonsense here. So let’s goahead and do trim. Let’s test that out. Got to give it a little second for that little robot to kick in and trim that for me. Let me start.
Hi this is Gillian with Launch4Life. I’m so happy…
So I actually should trim a little bit more. So let’s see. Just pull that up. Let’s see how it starts from here.
Hi this is Gillian with Launch.
Ok that’s better. So let’s do trim. So editing is always a process. It would be helped helpful if I hadn’t talked so much before I was recording but I’m teaching and doing all at the same time sometimes it’s a little fun to try and juggle two things at once. So let’s try.
Hi this is Gillian with Launch4Life. I’m so…
So how easy is that?
Ok so now I have trimmed my video. And now I can figure out what thumbnail do I want? Do I want a static thumbnail of me closing my eyes and looking silly? Do I want an animated thumbnail which kind of puts some action into your video. So that’s kind of fun.
I can even upload a custom thumbnail and I can even you know go ahead and take a picture so that’s kind of cool that we have all these different options. I’m gonna go ahead with the animated thumbnail and let’s just see how that looks.
So it’s just seeing me talking for like two seconds but I think that’s kind of fun to do that. So I’m gonna go ahead and go with that. And then in order to put it into my email this is what I have to do. I can copy the link which would be a link to this video but I actually want to get the thumbnail which is the whole picture and the link so that people can view it.
So I’m gonna go over here where it says copy link and thumbnail. Click on that. That’s all I need to do to copy it. Now I’m gonna go and open up my email program. So I have an email that in the interest of time I went ahead and prefilled out here and it just says, Hi thanks for booking an appointment watch the video below before you meet with us. Of course I’d write something better but that’s just something good enough for now. And then I can paste the link in, just go up to file and then oops edit and paste. And there we go.
Now we have the animated thumbnail, me kind of chit-chatting for a second so it draws their attention to it. And then here is the link. And when people receive this email they can either click on the picture or they can click on the link. Either one will work.
So let’s give this a subject heading. So I’m just gonna say Test Yidyard Email Videos. So we keep it straight. And then I will go ahead and I’m just sending it to myself. But I want you to see it. So I’m gonna go ahead and push send. Okay it’s sent. And here it is. So our video has come back to us and you can see I’m using Microsoft Office but it doesn’t matter if you’re using Gmail or I’ve tried Microsoft Office I tried Gmail, both worked. I’m pretty sure this is gonna work with anything that would allow for a picture.
So if you have any kind of email program that uses a standard picture in it I think you’re going to be fine. So most of us seem to be using either Microsoft Office or Gmail so it works very very easily. So let’s go ahead and see what our whole email looks like.
So here we go. We see the email. There’s my subject line. Here’s my little blurb and there’s the animated thumbnail. Animated thumbnail with me sort of yakking away. So they would go ahead and click the button.
And what it does is it takes them over to Vidyard and Vidyard kind of creates a little landing page for me. So that i have my title here, Thank You for Booking an Appointment With Launch4Life. They click play.
Hi this is Gillian with Launch4Life. I’m so happy.
And there you go. There’s my video. And the nice thing about Vidyard here. So I could have all sorts of great little videos that I put in here. And they’d all be saved for me. And if you want to get rid of this branding because of course vidyard is gonna advertise Vidyard. And you didn’t want it to say create upload and share unlimited videos with you Vidyard,
If you don’t want that branding, you have to pay for it. But this is a great program. I think Vidyard is great if you decide to investigate more of the features that vidyard offers. It’s like I said, it’s a great great program. But you don’t need anything to get started. You can just come right in here, make these great little videos, and all you need to do is sign up for a free account, install that Chrome extension, and you are good to go.
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