Video is now a significant part of the marketing mix, with 93% of marketing professionals using the technology this year, according to a new report co-sponsored by ReelSEO, The Web Video Marketing Council and Flimp Media. Even a year ago marketers questioned the use of video in email marketing, but the report found that many marketers have been successful using the two tactics together. "2013 Online Video Marketing Survey and Business Video Trends Report" surveyed 600 marketers or marketing decision-makers to find out how they are using video in their email efforts. About half of the respondents (52%) were from b-to-b companies. Today, according to the report, 60% of marketers are using video in email marketing, up from 52% last year. A huge percentage (82%) of those surveyed think email has been an "effective tool" for them, with 34% and 48% saying it is very effective or somewhat effective, respectively. More than half (60%) think that video in email helps improve conversion rates. Less than 3% said it makes "no difference" when it comes to conversions. Video emails are also being used internally, with 41% of respondents reporting they had used video for employee communications. By far the most effective use of video email marketing, however, was for product and service promotions, according to 73% of all respondents. More than half (55%) said video emails were effective for lead-gen. Not surprisingly, 71% of marketers said they will increase budgets for online video next year. So how should marketers use this information? Wayne Wall, CEO of Flimp Media and a founding member of WVMC, provided these three suggestions.

1. Make sure recipients can find the video in your email. Make video the main focus of an email, Wall said. It can't get lost in the text of a newsletter, for example. "Video can be more costly to create than text-and-static-graphic emails, so you need to make the focus the video to drive engagement," he said.
2. Be careful with quality. Video is simple to create on a smartphone—something marketers are actually doing. The risk is when video looks like it's been user-generated, Wall said. "It might be great for your budget, but if you're not making quality content, you risk hurting your brand," he said.
3. Have a clear call to action. With 94% of marketers using YouTube to post and share their videos, many may run into a problem they didn't realize they had: a missing call to action. Marketers that fail to include a specific action to take within the video or around the multimedia presentation could lose potential leads, Wall said. "You can't just send them to a Web page," he said. "You need to create an actionable experience."