It can be done, I’ve seen it.

Recently Goodmail launched a new feature for their email certification platform, one that would allow video in email. However if you don’t have the marketing budget for certification you can always try this…Converting video to an animated gif for email. 

I found this posted in the Email Marketers Club yesterday, by way of StyleCampaign‘s blog, as a potentially viable way to get a short usable video sequence in your email messages to attract users attention.   Step by step instructions are available if you want to try this yourself.

Hits:

  • Great way to incorporate your video message – if a picture says a thousand words what will your video say?
  • Great attention grabber – My eyes moved right to the moving portion of the email, giving it top priority in reviewing the message (I admit I was looking for it)
  • No script and the images are linked to via a simple “src img=” tag – so your not adding to the size of your email message, likely the link is track able as well looking like an image file.
Misses:
  • No sound – but it the draw is strong enough people will click for the full video with sound on your site/YouTube.
  • Slow Internet connections might see choppy playback
  • Outlook 2007 breaks animated gifs and only renders the first frame – choose it wisely
Want to see this in action yourself, use this link to forward yourself a copy.
If you read EmailKarma.net by email – did the video work for you?  Please let us know.