How do I add a Vidyard player with animated GIF thumbnail into a Marketo email?

Overview

It's possible to use animated (GIF) thumbnails for Vidyard players. 

You may be wondering if you can insert these into email templates that can be sent via Marketo or other email distribution platforms. 

Solution

There are a couple of options that we regard as best practice. If you are comfortable using the code editor in Marketo, use Option 1 as this should be quicker.

Option 1

Copy the email code from the Share tab in Vidyard and paste into the Marketo template. This can replace the current image in Marketo. 

This video will show you how that's done (no audio).

Option 2

In Marketo, use the image URL from Vidyard and place it into the External URL section.

If you are more familiar with the image/link editing tools than the code view in Marketo, then this is a good option.

1. Edit the image you wish to change.
   
2. Insert the Image URL into the External URL section.
   The image URL (static or animated) will always follow the format of:
   https://play.vidyard.com/PLAYERUUID.jpg?email=1
   
3. After doing that, you can edit the Marketo Alt Text for accessibility and add a page into the Link URL option to send clicks to the sharing page.
   
   Note: Although this looks like a .jpg image, it actually grabs the online .gif if there is one.