Videos are becoming a popular medium for businesses to communicate with their prospects and customers. And many businesses are making use of emails to send across their video files such as demos, how-to instructions, testimonials etc. But the real trouble starts when businesses try to send across a heavy video file via email. If you’re one of them, you must have encountered the dreadful “Error” message.
Large file error message in Gmail
As a workaround, many businesses upload their large video files on YouTube and share it with their prospects as a link via email. While it is convenient to do so, remember, your videos are on an open platform and therefore not secure. Also, the recipients will not receive an email notification for your email.
Now, considering your predicament, let us help you understand why sending a heavy video via email is not as simple as you thought it would be.
The first could be that your video is long and takes up more space. Also your video clip might be of a higher resolution, and you end up with a video too large to email.
Secondly, email clients have placed a limit on the size of the email you send. They are as follows:
According to Microsoft support, this limit is placed to prevent people from uploading large attachments that exceed the limits of most Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This gave rise to the need to downsize the video before businesses sent their emails.
As a way to tackle this problem, businesses have found many alternative methods to send video files through email. Let’s look at a few of them and also discuss their pitfalls.
There are many tools out in the market that lets you shrink/compress the size of your videos. But the million-dollar question is “By how much”? As you can see in the image below, the customer compressed his 6-minute video, but the size was reduced only by 25 Mb! This is why in most cases compressing can leave you with a heavy video file and loss in quality (audio, video, or both). Also, a zipped file needs to be downloaded and unzipped by the user and therefore it is a cumbersome process.
Businesses use cloud storage services like Google Drive, DropBox, or OneDrive to send large video files via email. Though it has its advantages, it is going as a link and therefore it falls short in offering an engaging visual preview for the recipients. Also, as shown in the image below, if your account reaches its storage limit, you will have to free up some space before sending the video link.
If you’re one of those cool kids who sport some technical know-how about coding and HTML, then wow! But a majority of us are not so savvy with coding. And that’s totally fine! Here’s the truth – major email clients like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo don’t support the ability to play embedded HTML5 videos directly in the inbox, so your recipients won’t be able to watch the video within the email, and the more complex your code is, the more likely it is that it’ll land in the spam folder.
Source: Email on Acid
Now that we’ve touched upon all the common tactics businesses have used over the years to send large video files via email along with their downsides, let’s address the elephant in the room – ‘What is the best way to send a large video file via email’?
According to industry forecasts, video alone will make up over 82% of all internet traffic by 2021. So we do not want you to miss out on all the fun! This is why we’re bringing you the easiest and fastest way to send a large video via email – a video hosting platform!
Through a video hosting platform, you can “host” the video on a third-party video platform by embedding a hyperlink it provides into your email.
By using a video hosting platform, you can share high-quality videos with your audience without the fear of heavy attachments or worrying about the size limits set by email clients.
We’ll now cover a few of the benefits a video hosting platform such as Hippo Video offers you:
Record or import videos – Gone are the days when businesses had to first record their video using a digital camera or any other external software, convert it and then send it as an attachment. By using a video hosting platform like Hippo Video, you can now record videos using a combination of audio with webcam and screen recording right from the platform or import previously recorded videos either from your local drive or from the video platform library.
Now a question might pop – Which are the video formats you can import to Hippo Video? Well, it supports formats such as MP4, MKV, FLV, and 3GP, MPG with a maximum file size of 1024 MB.
Edit, personalize, and track videos – A video hosting platform not only removes the weight off your email attachments, but you can also do more with them such as edit, personalize, and track your videos. Want to make your video crisper? With Hippo Video, you can edit your video to perfection by using the innate editing options such as trim, cut, crop, and add texts to your video.
Want a better reach for your videos? You can personalize elements that are relevant to your customer such as their name, company name, logo, etc. in just a few clicks.
To top it all, you can also track the interactions your recipients made with your video by analyzing the watch rate, video views, play rate, share rate, and retention rate. Based on this real-time video analytics, you can plan your next move with the prospect(s).
Share large video files from email clients – While it’s true that most email clients have set size limits, with a video hosting platform, you are no more confined to this. With Hippo Video integrated with major email clients like Outlook, Gmail, etc. it is easier to send large video files right from within your email. Yes, that’s right! You can now record, import, and send videos directly from your email without having to switch tabs.
Do check out our blog on quick and easy ways to embed videos in Gmail and Outlook to learn more!
Embed large video files on landing pages – Adding video to a landing page can help quickly capture the attention of prospects, deliver a clear message, and encourage them to take action without sounding pushy. Using videos on landing pages can increase conversion by 86%! – source: wordstream.
With Hippo Video, you can embed large video files into your landing page without any worry about server lag, as it is embedded on the hosting platform. It also allows you to customize your page by adding elements such as your logo, theme, CTA buttons, slider videos, and also create your own custom domain to enhance your brand identity.
To send your video landing page via email, you can either copy the link and share it with your contacts or you can import your CSV file to launch a landing page campaign via email, within Hippo Video.
We are now going to answer a few of the common questions you might have about sending large video files via email using a video hosting platform like Hippo Video. Let’s take a closer look at each one of them:
Hosting your large video files using a dedicated hosting platform like Hippo Video eliminates the loss of video quality irrespective of the size of your video as it takes care of the rendering and storing of your videos. Since your videos are sent as a link, it will be light on your email.
With Hippo Video, you can protect your videos with a password and also set an expiry date for the shared video link.
With three simple steps, you can send your videos using the Hippo video. All you have to do is – record, edit, and copy the video link to your desired medium.
With a video hosting platform, you can convey your message through a video, thereby reducing the need for more texts and promotional words such as ‘Offer’ ‘Low Price’ etc. You can also convey these in your video preview to entice your audience to click the video. Thereby, preventing your emails from landing in spam.
When you record with Hippo Video, in case you don’t want to use the in-built audio and camera, you can change which camera or microphone you want to use by changing the options in the Chrome extension. To do this, click on the Hippo Video icon to open the extension and go to ‘Advanced Settings’. It’s as simple as that.
A good video thumbnail will entice people to click on your video and also give them a clue about your video content. With Hippo Video, you can choose a static or a GIF video thumbnail to personalize your thumbnail content. You can also add merge fields such as first name, company logo, etc. along with texts to make your video thumbnails clickable.
With salespeople constantly on the go, expecting them to compress and attach large video files via email is a bit insane. With Hippo Video mobile app, you can record 1:1 videos, access pre-recorded content created across devices on your mobile, create in-video (Call To Action) CTA’s, etc. and send via email while on the go. It is also compatible with iOS and Android mobile devices.
With many email clients preventing you from sending large files over a certain size limit, you don’t need to have comprehensive developer skills or compress your videos in order for it to reach far and wide. With a video hosting platform like Hippo Video, you can just copy the embed code we provide and paste it in your email or even better, record videos directly from within the desired email client, and shoot away – it’s as simple as that!
Haven’t checked out Hippo Video yet? Sign-up today and enjoy the power of videos!
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