Video in Email
June 2nd, 2016
Video is one of the most used and popular media formats.
It has become extremely popular over the past years and will become even more so over the next years to come. It will be used more and more to illustrate and show things such as guides, tutorials, activities, products, etc. The visual aspect of video makes it phenomenal, anyone can understand it.
As a result, video in email is a hot topic and is being discussed more and more.
Is It Possible?
Video in email is technically not possible, at least not cross-client compatible.
There are various ways of embedding video and most email clients only support one method or another. Many of them don’t support Flash, HTML5, Java, Windows Media, etc. so it is a problem and makes cross-client compatible video in email impossible.
On overview of what video formats email clients support:
The only email client that supports video fully is Apple Mail.
So the verdict is no, the usual video embedding formats such as Flash, Windows Media, Java, HTML5, etc. are not a solution.
Cross-Client Solution
You can embed video into email and make it cross-client compatible.
Use our WordPress Newsletter plugin and simply paste a video URL of any popular service into your newsletter. The URL is automatically replaced with an image of the video – fetched from the relevant service – and a play icon. When the video image is clicked, it takes the user to the original video URL online.
Supported video services include all the services supported by WordPress itself when embedding video into posts/pages. Some of these services include:
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- Flickr
- Blib
- CollegeHumor
- DailyMotion
- and many more…
Watch The Video
Here is a video to show you exactly how video in email newsletters work and how to do it.
If you’re receiving this via email/newsletter, it is a live example of the video URL being replaced by an image and play icon.
Primitive Solution to Video in Email
A more simple and basic solution to video in email is to convert video to animated GIF.
Some services such as MakeAGif and EzGif will allow you to do just this.
Most email clients fully support animated GIF.
We at Tribulant Software have a great passion for WordPress, development, blogging and the Internet in general. Building useful plugins to improve WordPress’ functionality is our goal.
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