SOME BLUE-CHIP NAMES in marketing and advertising are testing technology that allows senders to embed video in e-mail without any streaming or buffering.
Vismail lets marketers include up to a 60-second video that’s activated when recipients roll their cursor over a specified part of the screen. There is no need for recipients to click on anything.
“Thanks to clever compression techniques the e-mail is always delivered intact, there’s no attachment, and yet the video and graphics are viewable instantly and repeatedly. They’re forwardable, and may be stored indefinitely,” says Vismail America president Keith McCracken.
One possible drawback for direct marketers: Vismail requires the sender to supply video, which means either spending a great deal of money to create a new spot or repurposing an old one, which may not be the most effective way to use e-mail.
Still, the technology is worth a look and some well-known organizations are trying it, among them Delta Air Lines, the Ad Council and Unilever.
The Ad Council, for example, has begun to use Vismail to deliver its well-known public service announcements to local television stations.
The group first tried Vismail on July 4 to promote its new “Buzzed Driving” PSAs. The organization has since stepped up its use.
“What we do is take that Vismail file and push it out if we have a broadcast spot that we want to highlight,” says Barbara Shimaitis, senior vice president of interactive services at the Ad Council. “Prior to [Vismail] we would have to send a link and have a Windows Media Player open, or have the user click on a link and go somewhere else. With this technology, [recipients] can see the actual 40-second spot right in the e-mail.”
Shimaitis says interactivity with the Ad Council’s e-mail campaigns has increased dramatically thanks to Vismail.
Delta used the technology to deliver a spot aimed at differentiating its recently launched New York-to-Chicago route from those of other regional carriers. The effort aimed to overcome any negative feelings travelers might have about regional jets.
“Though this was a regional jet, it was one of the newest and best regional-jet products that any aircraft manufacture has put out in recent years and the experience on it actually was better than what some consumers would consider the mainline product,” says Delta’s CRM director Mark Krolick. “Our challenge was ‘How do we make that point in an e-mail?’ You can say it, but they won’t believe it.”
He decided to try a video to get the airline’s message across.
The campaign to Delta’s customers using Vismail spurred a lift in response over its HTML efforts. However, Krolick adds, “What I can’t tell you is if the incremental cost to create the promotion paid for itself.” The answer will determine whether Delta will use Vismail in the future.
“The expense of sending it through Vismail is not the issue,” he says. “It’s the cost to produce video. That’s a significant expense.”
Krolick points out that since Delta’s promotions have months-long life cycles, it’ll be some time before he can determine if the effort paid off.
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