How to embed video into gmail email newsletters (a quick hack)

One of the most frequent questions I get at Flashissue is around using video in email marketing.

Video can be a great marketing too because it’s so much more engaging than text but while using videos on a websites is pretty cut and dry – you just paste the embed code into a page – when it comes to email, the waters get murky.

Watch the video explanation

The vast majority of email software – and that includes Gmail & Outlook – will not support embedding video, which means that you cannot embed video into email newsletters because it will not display when the reader gets it.

What you can do is embed a link to a video and send readers to a video email newsletter landing page or you can simply link directly to the video on Youtube but both of these options are not ideal. The former requires you to login to your blog software and create a page and the latter doesn’t look particularly professional.

The way I embed video into my email newsletters is to create an “instant” webpage for the video using a free service called Pen.io.

Create and Send Engaging Newsletters From Gmail

Step 1: Create the email

 

I use Flashissue to create video email newsletters inside Gmail like the one below.

 

Screen Shot 2015-01-22 at 8.39.44 AM

 

I add an image of the Youtube video i want to include into my email by taking a simple screen shot from the Youtube site and link it to my Pen.io site.

 

Step 2: Create the video splash page

 

I go to Pen.io and create a quick landing page for my video by taking the Youtube embed code and pasting it into my page.

 

Screen Shot 2015-01-22 at 8.50.13 AM

View the video page here

Then I send my email! So that’s how to embed video into email newsletters quickly and without hassle.

 

Start creating an email like this quickly from inside Gmail

TRY FLASHISSUE (IT’S FREE)

 

 

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