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Email Marketing Strategy: Create Impact with Rich Media

A small tweak in your email marketing strategy can supercharge your marketing in spades!

37% of marketers think visual marketing is the most important form of content for their business, after blogging, according to Social Media Examiner.

Most marketing managers turn to rich media to retain subscribers and win them over. Rich media include visual media like GIFs, and a wide range of digital media, with dynamic motion, which makes use of enhanced sensory features such as audio, animation, and video.

However rich media often impacts your email viewability and deliverability.

Here are three things to think about as you consider adding rich media in your email marketing:

  1. Your email will be flagged as potentially malicious content and blocked. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) block email with embedded media because viruses and malware tend to these files. If you make it past the email server, spam filters in email clients like Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, and Yahoo! may block your attachment completely, affecting your email campaign’s deliverability in a major way.
  2. Your messages become too large which creates a general server overload. Large files can cause performance issues for your campaigns and significant delays in recipients receiving your messages due to firewalls, download capability on mobile devices, etc. So even if you end up making it past the spam folder, readers may quickly feel inconvenienced by the download process, hit delete, and move on.
  3. Your email contact’s experience may be impacted. Most email marketing land in the Promotions tab because of the promotional messages and embedded rich media. In addition, emails with embedded rich media render differently across various email clients, browsers, and devices. Therefore, not only do you run a risk for your campaign deliverability, but your email can be cumbersome or difficult for readers to download.
77% of B2B marketers say email deliverability is essential for success, according to Demand Gen Report’s Benchmark Survey. Click To Tweet

You can still send out a short text email without rich media or attachments and get your point across.

Create Landing Page

You can create a separate landing page with additional information (and rich media!).

Lead your readers there with a link from your email.

When you link to the content directly, you:

  • reduce the risk of deliverability issues
  • increase the chances people will actually open – and read – your messages
  • improve your user experience
  • drive traffic to your site
  • enhance your user insights and tracking capabilities

Creating a landing page allows you to track more stats than just click rates, as you would in just an email. You can measure and analyze your prospects’ landing page behaviors and better understand their next steps.

How to Embed Audio or Video

If you must include rich media in your email, use a high-quality image then link that picture to the video or audio on your site, or elsewhere on the web.  If you’re using a Mac, use Ember or Skitch. On other platforms, Jing by TechSmith is a great screen capture tool. You can also always crop your image using Picmonkey or Aviary, for free.

While you can technically embed HTML code with audio, video, or rich media into your campaign, it will hurt your email marketing strategy more than it helps.

How to Include Attachment

You can create a separate landing page with additional information and lead your readers there as outlined. Alternatively, you can host the PDF file in the asset library in your marketing automation solution and share the URL of your file in the email.

 

Work with Us

We hope these tips have equipped you with email marketing strategy and insights to create an impact with rich media.

Email marketing is just the beginning.  At Reactionpower, we help companies in fast-growth mode with digital marketing strategy and execution.

We recognize that there’s no one solution that fits all. Guided by strategic insights, we’ll help you create meaningful engagement with email marketing and implement the right marketing tactics for your business to seize growth opportunities and boost revenue.

 

Jenn Wise is an information technology enthusiast and AWS solutions architect. An innovative product, business development, and strategic operations executive, she is experienced in e-commerce, marketplaces, global expansion (APAC, EMEA, and LATAM), and leading innovation initiatives. Jenn is currently the Director of Business Development at Reactionpower.com. Her mission is to help busy tech and marketing executives get more done, particularly during fast-paced periods of challenge and change.

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