Most companies are interested in Christmas-related messaging, whether it’s advertising an upcoming sale or just sending holiday greetings and well wishes to your loyal audience. There are many formats and mediums you could use for these purposes; you could use a social media post to communicate to your entire audience at once or even send printed greeting cards to each individual customer. But one of the best approaches could be email-embedded videos.
Why is this the case?
The Value of a Wishing a Merry Christmas to Your Clients
Let’s start by exploring why Christmas messaging is so valuable to most brands.
- Warm wishes and brand relationships. Christmas and the winter holiday season are great opportunities to build the relationships you have with your clients. It's the perfect time to issue warm wishes to people and reinforce your existing connections.
- An opportunity for reflection. This is also a great opportunity for reflection. It's nearing the end of the year, and people are thinking about what they've done and what they've accomplished throughout the rest of the year. If you helped your client succeed, this is the time to remind them.
- Sales and discounts. Everyone knows that the holiday season is the time when major brands offer sales, discounts, and other special promotions. You can jump on this bandwagon as well, offering more incentives for your clients to work with your business.
- Potential referrals. Many people feel extra charitable or kind throughout the holiday season. You may be able to tap into this tendency to win some additional referrals.
- Timing benefits. In addition to reflecting on the previous year, many people are looking forward to the year to come. They're planning next year's budget and are determining what services to use. That makes it the perfect time to remind your client of all you've done for them and all the value you bring to the relationship.
Email and Video: The Perfect Combination
Christmas messaging can be effective no matter what medium you choose to use, but one of the best techniques is to use and edit videos in your email.
Email itself is an ideal marketing platform for several reasons. It has the following qualities:
- Instant. If you want to send out an email in the next second, you can, and your recipient will get it instantly. With direct mail strategies that require printing and mass mailing, you have to plan your campaign weeks or even months in advance. But with email, you can literally design and deploy an email in the span of an afternoon.
- Inexpensive. Email is also inexpensive. Depending on the tools you use, you might be able to design and deploy emails for free or for a very small fee. You'll be paying pennies on the dollar to reach people digitally, while direct mail and other traditional marketing strategies could exhaust your budget.
- Highly effective. The ROI of email marketing speaks for itself. Even if your campaign isn't fully optimized, you should still see a powerful return on your investment. With the right messaging and positioning, you should have no trouble driving people to your website or whatever other target you want them to hit.
If email is so powerful, why do we need embedded videos to make it even more powerful?
Videos are:
- Easy to consume. Reading isn't necessarily difficult, but videos are much easier to consume. People can watch much more video content in a small amount of time and are less likely to procrastinate engaging with a video. If you insert many paragraphs of text information, you're going to have a lower engagement rate from the start.
- Concise. Videos also offer an opportunity to create your messaging concisely. If you only have a minute or two of time to work with, you'll need to find a way to say what you want to say as simply and directly as possible. You can write text concisely as well, but videos offer a much more accessible onramp.
- Targeted and personalized. If you use the right tools, your email videos can also be targeted and personalized. You can write scripts for different videos for each different demographic your business targets. You might even be able to personalize the video with details for your individual clients.
- Differentiating. Most email marketing strategies do not include video, even in today's era of video centric content marketing. Merely embedding a video in your email campaign can therefore instantly differentiate your competitors. This shouldn't be your only differentiating strategy, but it can help you support your campaign regardless.
Tips for Using an Email Video in Your Christmas Messaging Strategy
If you're going to use embedded videos in your emails, make sure you follow these tips:
- Use the right tools. There are many different tools on the market designed to help you produce videos, distribute videos, and embed videos in your emails. Not all of them are worth using, and not all of them are worth paying for. Make sure you've done your research and compare multiple different tools before making a final decision. It's also important to estimate your ROI in factor in all the costs of your email marketing campaign before deploying your Christmas message.
- Keep it short. For the most part, videos are much more effective when they're short. If your video ends up being more than a minute or two long, find a way to make some cuts. Otherwise, your audience may bounce before it's finished playing.
- Offer a special deal. If you want people to take action on your email, you have to incentivize them to do so. That could mean offering them a discount, a sneak preview of new content to come, or premium content that they can't get elsewhere.
- Have a clear call to action (CTA). Make sure you include a strong call to action (CTA), encouraging your viewers to visit your website, buy a product, contact you, or take some other significant course of action.
With embedded videos, your Christmas emails are going to have a much higher likelihood of resonating with your clients. But you'll need the right tools and the right partners to make those videos work.
For more information or to get started with video and your email marketing, sign up for free today!
