Wednesday, 6 October 2010, 9:28 PM

Linking to a Video in Emails

We’ve been doing some testing lately, to send emails with videos included. But since it’s not possible to play a video in any other email client than Mac Mail, the only solution is to include a link to the video on the web.

The real question is, how do you clearly indicate to the recipient that it’s a video you’re linking to? Personally, I think it works best with a picture from the film and a play button, partly because this combination is becoming pretty common, (even if you exclude YouTube) – and partly because everybody knows what a play button is. The video on the website should start to play automatically since the recipient of the email already clicked on ”Play” in the letter.

So far, I haven’t seen a newsletter with a video link that is clear and that differs from other links. For the most part they all seem to be linking to a video with either simple pictures or just a text link.

Personally, I think this is a good video link:

Update: HTML5 and video in email (by Campaign Monitor).