Gmail Achieves Video in the Email Inbox…Sort Of
Mar 18 2009
A breakthrough for Email Marketers may have been achived today when Gmail Labs launched “YouTube previews in mail“. Once activated in Labs, Gmail automatically detect YouTube links in emails and displays previews with the ability to view the entire video below the message. Also included in this roll-out were Picasa and Flickr links, and Yelp reviews. I took a few screenshots of YouTube video links in personal emails to my Gmail below:
Preview
Playing Video
The implications of this are big for email marketers IF Gmail can detect YouTube links masked behind ESP personalized and trackable email marketing links. I am about to run some tests and will report on my fidnings in this same post…stay tuned.
UPDATE
Ok, so I just ran 2 tests of this through emailROI, one with a textual Youtube link in the preheader and one with only an Embedded trackable Youtube link (“Watch the Video”). The Gmail feature didn’t detect the youtube link behind “Watch the Video”, but it did detect the textual Youtube link in the preheader.
So…what now?
A fun way to try this out would be to segment your Gmail users add a YouTube video url to your email, but not in a link format that your ESP software will try to mask. YouTube does track embedded video plays to the view count, but they count very slow. So, you will have to wait a little while to see if the video was watched.
Video in the Inbox is seen by many as the holy grail feature. This example by is Gmail/Youtube centric, but does provide hope for the future of watching video in your inbox. I plan to try this out in the next eROI newsletter and will report back in a new post.
If you have seen this in your inbox, or have thoughts or additional ideas on how to leverage this feature, please post in a comment below.
- Posted by Alex Williams
- @alexcwilliams
- at 7:30 PM
Published in Email Marketing News, Viral Email Marketing
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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March 18th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Alex – But…you first have to be savvy enough to activate this feature in Labs, right? How many average consumers will actually do this?
dj
March 19th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Nice! Good to see that someone’s at least experimenting with video. Obviously not going to work for all/most Gmail users, but it’s a step in the right direction.
@DJ – true, but for businesses with the right type of audience (or with a very good relationship with their audience) you could introduce this as a benefit (“view the latest episode/get a sneak peek at the latest product directly in your inbox”) and show Gmailers *how* to turn it on. Just a thought.
March 19th, 2009 at 8:56 am
As gmail typically does, tests the service in Labs then rolls it out as standard in Gmail based on feedback, I would expect to see this as standard in gmail within 12-15 months.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:45 am
The Gmail user is usually younger and savvier than the average email user, at least that is what we found in our recent study of students.
My stance has always been that it’s better to experiment early and figure things out then to jump on the bandwagon after critical mass.
April 7th, 2009 at 12:33 am
Interesting, I was just thinking about
this, facebook does it of course, the
application is *pretty* reliable, but
most usb cameras distract from the
communication with their low frame rates.
Can’t wait though, sounds cool.
September 15th, 2009 at 2:25 am
I discovered the Labs feature some time back but i’d say it still needs some tweaking. In my email the right side of the video is cut off when i play it – terribly annoying.
September 24th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
very interesting, just goes to show demand for video email is rising