Email Design 2017 #1 VIDEO

Email is like coding in the 90s. The good news is that the email community is close knit and constantly looking for alternative ways to match what is possible in web browsers. 2017 has already been an exciting time for email design. No doubt about it. In the first of a series of posts on email design trends, we’ll be looking at video.

Embedding video has been a bit of a holy grail for email designers for what seems like forever. The advantages for senders are obvious. Video in email has been proven to increase click-through rates by up to 65%. Richer, more engaging content right in someone’s inbox. What’s not to love? Especially as creating good quality video has become so much more accessible, that most clients have great video content, eager to reach a wider audience.

Whispers, promises, long periods of silence. Then…boom! It’s now possible to embed video directly into your email. Well, that’s the headline, unfortunately support for html5 video is very limited. iOS 10 supported the video tag, but the recent beta release of iOS11 has dropped that support – they giveth and taketh away!

If you do decide that embedding video is something you want to do, there are some other considerations you should be aware of. Size. It really does matter. As does length. Is it going to eat into your subscriber’s data allowance and give them a bad experience of your brand?

Our view is there are better, more widely supported ways to include movement in your emails. GIFs, CSS Transitions, CSS Sprites and Cinemagraphs all enable you to add motion to an email and are fully supported for the majority of email clients. It’s not the same as embedding video of course, but until it’s more widely supported it’s definitely a ‘next best’ option.

If you’d like to know more about embedding video in email, getting movement into your email, or what to pick our brains on any aspect of email design just get in touch with Ian Reeves. We’ll be happy to help you turn your email design dreams into reality.