Share video in an email campaign

Adding video to your email campaigns is an effective way to increase clickthrough rates and promote engagement with your message.

You can use the Email Campaign embed option in Vidyard to easily copy a hyperlinked video thumbnail into your email campaigns and templates. 

The thumbnail acts as the focal point of your email and directs viewers to the video sharing page or a custom URL of your choice. You can also select an email distribution platform (for example Salesloft, HubSpot, etc) to get an identifying link for that platform. This is a great way to re-engage contacts that you've already collected in an email list and capture video analytics related to each viewer's engagement in Vidyard.

Copy the email campaign embed code

1. Select the  Share button next to a video in your library, then select Embed
2. Select Email Campaign from the Embed location dropdown menu
3. Choose where you want your viewers to watch the video when they click on the thumbnail image:
   • Select an option under Destination URL to direct viewers to your sharing page (remember: you can customize your sharing page), or to your custom URL.
   • Select an email Distribution platform (HubSpot, Salesloft, etc) to add an identification token for that platform to your thumbnail link
4. Select Copy Embed Code

Add the video to your campaign

Once you've obtained the embed code from Vidyard, you can add the video thumbnail to a template in your email marketing or sales provider. In the example below we've used MailChimp as our tool of choice.

Paste the code into the HTML editor that your provider uses to build email templates. You may need to preview how and where the video thumbnail appears and adjust accordingly. 

In addition to the editing options in your tool's template builder, you can also add a width= parameter to the <img> tag to adjust the size. We added a width="640" at the end of the following example:

<img src="//cdn.vidyard.com/thumbnails/7812491/QyziddECIj_dLht0sc26lblhNvwc_play_button_small.jpg" alt="Yukon" width="640"/>

Identifying viewers in an email campaign

One of the most effective ways to identify viewers from your distribution list and capture their video engagement data in Vidyard is to use a dynamic variable.

Dynamic variables allow you to insert unique user data from a recipient's contact record into an email to personalize or substitute information. When you select a Distribution Platform before copying your video embed code, we insert a variable for email addresses that identifies viewers when sent through that platform.

Marketing and Sales tools with dynamic email variables

We've put together a short list of dynamic variables from common email distribution tools. You’ll see these variables in the code you copy from Vidyard if you select a distribution platform. If you’re using dynamic variables outside of Vidyard, always double check your tool's documentation to verify that you're using the correct variable.

Other ways to add video to email

Not everyone has an email distribution software tool, and that's okay. You can still add videos to email with either the Vidyard web app or by copying your video's sharing link. 

The Vidyard web app

The Vidyard web app allows you to access your personal video library and share videos with contacts in an email message. You'll find the app in a growing number of integrated products that you already use—Gmail, Outlook, SalesLoft, Outreach + many more. 

Copy your video's sharing link

The Copy Link sharing option allows you to paste a link and hyperlinked thumbnail image of your video into an email message. When clicked, your viewer is directed to the video sharing page.

You can paste the link anywhere, and the thumbnail will appear in any editor that supports rich text and images (Gmail, Outlook, Outreach, Salesloft, Zendesk, WordPress, Google Docs, etc).

1. Select the  Share button next to a video in your library
2. Select Copy Link
   • If you add a recipient's email address, the link includes a token that will identify them when they watch the video
3. Paste the link into an email message