Why Not to Use YouTube for Video Email Marketing

The subject line of the Wednesday, March 24th issue of the TM Tipline caused me to immediately open the newsletter:  “How to Use YouTube for Direct Marketing.” 
I immediately read the article and thought “just because you can use YouTube for direct web video marketing, doesn’t mean you should.”  While Matt Shaw presented some good options for considering YouTube, with the key factor being free, I would not recommend relying on the site for your entire video marketing efforts.
In all fairness, the TM Tipline article should have been titled “How to Use Video for Marketing Purposes,” especially since the author gave some great tips for creating video content.  Unfortunately, too many people still equate YouTube with web video marketing.  YouTube is a video hosting site that can play a role in your efforts to market with online video, but it should not be the only strategy you execute.
Since YouTube is currently a free video sharing site, organizations should consider creating a Channel and posting relevant video content.  This action will ensure that people who go directly to YouTube to search for video content will have a better chance of locating your video.  Also, this may improve your organization’s search engine results, since online video has been proven to help with search engine optimization (SEO). 
Just because your video is on YouTube doesn’t mean viewers will further engage with your organization.  There are a limited number of opportunities to place key calls to action with a video hosted by YouTube.  Most organizations choose to link back traffic to their home page.  A viewer may end up on your home page – but then what? 
Another thing to keep in mind – a viewer may get distracted by other videos hosted on YouTube.  Even worse – viewers can get distracted by other content, such as web ads.  You want to leverage the video to capture your audience’s attention.  Since attention spans can be fleeting, you do not want to contend with competition from other sources.
Most importantly – if you are creating video email campaigns, think long and hard before sending out emails pointing to your YouTube video.  First and foremost – B2B marketers should not make YouTube the linchpin of their video email campaigns.  Most major corporations either directly block access to this website or they tinker with the bandwidth so if an employee can see the video, it could be choppy.  Second – organizations including colleges/universities, hospitals, museums, etc. may also not want to rely on YouTube for video emails.  If supporters are providing their professional email address instead of a personal email (such as an @AOL, @Gmail, @MSN, @Yahoo, etc.), then there is a strong chance they may not be able to access content posted to YouTube.  Plus, if you’re embedding YouTube players into your own website, viewers may not be able to see the videos.  Or, even worse, they may click on the video player and link to the YouTube site, leaving your site behind.
Aesthical considerations, especially in relation to your video thumbnail (the image that viewers first see), should also be considered.  YouTube does not provide carte blanche options to content creators for their video thumbnail.  A certain number of frames are provided.  These frames may not best position your video for engagement or recall duration.  If a random frame is presented, that’s what people will see and it may not be enough for them to view your content.
Technical issues may also occur.  If all of your viewers concurrently click through to watch the video, it could cause some buffer issues to occur.  Content may stream awkwardly and appear choppy to the viewer.  Extensive buffering might make a viewer move on to something else.
Since the YouTube logo appears on every YouTube video player, you’re providing indirect branding to the video sharing site every time you send out a video email or embed video content into your website.
While YouTube provides limited metrics, you will need to integrate another content tool for more in depth details about your campaign.  Too often, when campaigns start, content creators are focused on the content and not the metrics.  Make your campaign as effective as possible by covering all the bases at launch.
Just because a service is free doesn’t mean it is something to rely on for your direct marketing efforts.

Learn All About Successful Video Email Marketing (Without YouTube) in Our Free eBook!

So if you shouldn’t use YouTube for email marketing, how in the world should you use it? Well I’ll tell you. But you’ve got to download our eBook first. Click the big shiny button to the left to get a world-class education in what you should be doing to prevent people from throwing your hard-earned email marketing budget in the trash.