That age old question has raised its head again in the last couple of weeks – ‘can I have video embedded in my email please?’

Haven Holiday’s interesting case study on their recent video in email campaign has been cropping up, and throwing out as many questions as it answers. So… right on cue, here is my soapbox shout on using video in email.

Of course it’s not surprising that email marketers are keen to get in on the online video revolution. The website visiting public can’t get enough of streaming video.

But video in email is not reliable in the way that website based video is. It won’t work for all your recipients, and those it does work for, may well not be happy it did.

Extensive inbox testing is essential if you are embedding video. Some Microsoft email clients for example, use HTML tags that allow video to be played in emails. But others don’t. Only by testing your creative in all relevant email clients can you get a clear picture of how effectively your campaign will be delivered.

If your testing works well and you know clearly which domains will support your video and which won’t, you could then filter your campaign send by domain name, to control its successful delivery. But wait – what about email forwards? You can’t control them by domain, so the valuable viral element of your campaign could be lost, simply because of the unreliability of video.

As ever in digital marketing, the opportunities and developments are dynamic and exciting. I’ve heard of movements in the industry to let you insert java script into emails that will enable video to play. But again, this is likely to be specific to certain ISPs and not supported by all – so the need to test will remain paramount.

Animations in emails can also cause rendering problems. For example, Outlook 2007 won’t support animated gifs. Remember when using animations to have your key message or call to action on the first frame – however briefly it is shown – as Outlook 2007 will display this as the static image.

Beware too, the potential intrusiveness of video in email – particularly when sending to B2B lists where your recipients are at work. In a quiet office with the Boss hovering, who really wants to be seen watching videos at their desk?

The most reliable solution to all of these issues and complications is to use your email campaign as a teaser to drive recipients to a campaign micro site where they can click to view your video clip, at their leisure.

By including a ‘play video clip’ button in your email you can have can a powerful call to action. It’s practically a human reflex now to click ‘play’ when it looks like there is a video to watch. So marketers and ESPs who are wisely cautious but click-through hungry, can reap the benefits of the pull of video in their emails, without actually embedding any.

A campaign micro site with video can become the centre of your integrated marketing campaign, so you can drive traffic to it from a series of on and offline channels and really maximise your return.