In a post at the Emma blog, Edwin Acevedo tells the story of VideoLink, a video-production company that wanted to highlight its skills in an email campaign that showed off new features at a redesigned website. "They made a short video [hosted by CEO Gina Chudnow]," he says, "added a screen shot to their email and linked it to a video landing page they made through a service called Flimp On-Demand."

The strategy paid off with a clickthrough rate of 26.2 percent, and nearly 65 percent of those who launched the video watched it to completion—all 49 seconds.

"[T]here's no perfect way to embed video to play within an email (yet)," notes Acevedo. "But what VideoLink did is fairly common and effective: use screen shots and text links to send people to a landing page that hosts the video."

To support the use of video in email campaigns, Acevedo cites these findings from Forrester:

• 71 percent of online audiences watch Internet video.
• The number of video streams likely will double by 2013.
• Video in email can double or triple clickthrough rates.

The Po!nt: Be a star! Don't let forward-looking competitors leave your text-only campaigns in the dust: consider the addition of video elements to your next creative opus.

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