Everybody wants to embed videos into their HTML emails. The sad truth is they break more often than not. There are promising developments here and there (and Mark Brownlow has a great roundup here).
But the fact of the matter is the safest thing you can do is generate a screenshot of your YouTube video player, insert that image into your email, then link it to your actual video landing page.
It’s a miserable process that we just made easier with our YouTube (and Blip.tv and Vimeo) merge tag…
It was announced at the latest Email Insider Summit that Goodmail will begin offering a service that actually allows email marketers to embed video in their HTML emails. Normally, embedded videos don’t work reliably in HTML emails, because it requires JavaScript (and JavaScript gets blocked by most anti-virus programs, because it’s potentially very dangerous). Here’s a snippet from a recent MediaPost article about Goodmail’s new service:
“…the Goodmail system– known as Certified Video–can benefit marketers in all fields who may be looking to place an ad or informational clip in an email. Goodmail will begin distributing the system early in 2009 in partnership with AOL, Yahoo, Cox, Comcast and others”
