I received an email from Sadlers Wells, the dance theatre folk today. And was immediately struck by how heavily that email used video to help sell the shows. 5 out of the 7 listed.

Clearly dance is a very visual product and video can do so much more than a description, static photo and theatre critic quote. It can move you. And hopefully move you to click 'buy'.

Check out how they go about this and how you could do this with your business (whatever it may be!). Combining video and email is well worth making a song and a dance about.

What's great, is if you click 'Read More' on the email, it takes you to the web page where the video is a still image that says 'play clip' or 'buy tickets'. BUT if you click 'Video' from the email, then when the web page opens it autoplays the video. Nice.

AUTOPLAY
The auto play click through, means the transition feels seemless. It removes the chance of us getting distracted by something else, we're drawn straight in.

SHORT & PUNCHY
The videos are quick, to the point and visually enthralling. The original trailer for the Motionhouse show 'Broken' that I've featured here actually has a YouTube trailer of 2m33. But Sadlers Wells (who could easily have just embedded that) has a shorter, punchy edit of just 49 seconds. If I'm reading their email on my lunchbreak, I can watch the trailers for 3 shows from their email in the time it'd take to watch just one long one. Makes total sense.

EASY TO CONVERT
Remember that a video can only do so much. You need a good landing page to convert people. It's easy on the Sadler's Wells site to see how we can buy tickets with the big red button next to the player.

EASY TO SHARE
On completion of the video we see a series of 'share' buttons so we're prompted to share and given easy ways to do so. Again, this makes it easy for us to continue our purchasing journey. I could share this video with friends/family I might like to ask to come with me, or give myself cultural cudos by tweeting 'how cool does this show look?!' or, well, by using it in a blog post...

HOW CAN THIS WORK FOR YOU?
Clearly if you have a visual, emotional product: show, seminar, band, conference to promote then it's clear. But frankly, if you have products, the benefit of having product videos (click that link - I've banged on about it before) is really powerful, combine that with an effective email strategy and it's even stronger.

EMAIL AND VIDEO TOGETHER
Any business should recognise the power of nurturing leads using their own (growing) email database. Using video is a big tool in your armoury. Putting obvious thumbnails for people to click on is key. Autoplay when the site loads - briliant.

SALES METRICS
By using the likes of Wistia or Vidyard for your business video hosting you're able to benefit from amazing metrics. Unlike YouTube or Vimeo, these hosts tie into your email marketing platform (Mailchimp for example) and even Marketing Automation Software and CRMs. This means you can see exactly who from your email list has watched your video, how long for, maybe with repeat viewings... ie how hot a lead are they? And for that matter, you can see which videos/products/email thumbnails are working best so you're not just doing it on a hunch.

Making a video is only the beginning: it's the overture; it's how you put that video centre stage and let it perform for you that matters.