Featuring a video in your email campaign can give it a bit of extra polish and also greatly increase your audience engagement. Unfortunately, email servers aren’t as fond of video as we are, and many servers tend to block videos that have been embedded in the content of the email itself.
In addition to the dip in overall delivery rates because of this, embedding video in your email makes it darn near impossible to track who’s watched it – which is why we created the handy video block in our drag and drop editor.
The video block is an easy way to share video content in your email campaigns. It does not embed the actual video in the email campaign but rather links to it in a smart way.
You’ll only need to copy and paste the URL of your video from YouTube or Vimeo into the video block. We’ll take care of the rest: we’ll grab a cover image for the video, overlay a play icon on top of it, and link it to the video content.
So, while you can’t embed a video into your email campaign, you can use the video block to link to any YouTube or Vimeo video in a similar fashion.
How to use the video block
To get started, from an open campaign drag the video block into your template and drop it into the desired spot.
You’ll see the content properties for the video block appear in the editor panel on the right.
Add a YouTube or Vimeo video URL
In the content properties section of the editor, you’ll first see a place to add your Youtube or Vimeo video URL – which are the only video hosting services that we currently support.
After you insert a valid URL, in the actual video block of the campaign you’ll see that a cover image with a play icon overlayed on top of it has been added in place of the video. That image with a play icon is how your video will appear inside the email campaign, and you can adjust the icon type, color, and size.
Special note for Vimeo videos: Only the Public setting will allow you to insert a video or generate a thumbnail into the video block of the drag and drop editor. For any Vimeo video that is password-protected or any video hosted on Vimeo with the “Hide this video from Vimeo.com”, the “Private”, or the “Unlisted” setting turned on, the editor will be unable to generate a cover image.
Play icon type
You can choose from 7 options on the type of icon you want to have placed over the cover image of the video. The choice you make will immediately be reflected in the editor panel as well as in the video block.
Play icon color
You can choose between a light or dark icon, and the choice you make will immediately be visible in the editor panel as well as in the video block.
Play icon size
For the icon size, you’ll need to select an option between 50 and 80 pixels. The choice you make will immediately be reflected in the editor panel as well as in the video block.
Additional video block options
Padding
You can adjust all 4 sides of the padding of the video block altogether by leaving More options toggled off and increasing the number inside the box. Or, you can switch it on and then adjust each of the 4 sides individually.
Hide On
You can also choose to hide the video block on mobile or desktop by clicking on the corresponding icon to select it.