How to Add Videos to Your Email

Why Use Videos in Emails

Adding videos to your marketing emails is a great way to capture attention and improve engagement. However, directly embedding videos can be problematic, as only a limited number of email providers and clients support this feature. Plus, a broken embedded video can hurt your marketing. That's why we suggest the following reliable ways to add videos to your emails. When done right and tested well, these methods will give you excellent results:

1. Animated GIF solution:

• Animated GIFs play automatically when the email is opened and resemble actual videos.
• GIFs load quickly if kept under 700KB (Vine MA limit).
• Animated GIFs work well as video previews.

• Create a thumbnail image for your video, such as a screenshot with an added play button.
• Add the play button using free tools available online.
• Host your video on any platform like YouTube.
• Link the image to the video's URL.

Adding Animated GIF

1. To start, create a GIF image or find a suitable one from free or paid services online:
   • Tools like https://imgflip.com/ can help create GIFs from videos.
   • You can download GIFs from websites like: https://giphy.com/
   • Many sites like https://loading.io/ help to make slick GIFs in seconds:
   
2. Open your email in Vine MA, and either add a new image block or click an existing one and then click Edit Image.

3. On the Organization Library tab, click to browse for the animated GIF you want to use in your email. Optionally, click to save the image to your organization library.
4. Click OK to return to the email editor.

5. To reduce your email size and prevent images from appearing as attachments in certain email clients, we highly recommend going to Settings and choosing Use Linked Images:

6. Save the email and then test it.

Adding Still Image with Play Button

1. Create a thumbnail image for your video by taking a screenshot of your video and then adding a play button and text on top of it. You can use a free tool like: https://addplaybuttontoimage.way4info.net/ to add the play button:

2. Open your email in Vine MA, and either add a new image block or click an existing one and then click Edit Image.
3. On the Organization Library tab, click and select the thumbnail image you created for your video.
4. Click OK to return to the email editor.
5. Next, set the Link Type of your image to Normal Web Link and paste the URL of your video:
   

You can host the video yourself or use any hosting service, such as YouTube.

Here is how your email will look in Microsoft Outlook: