VideoRetailer.org - Exploring the Intersection of Video and e-Commerce.

“Videos we’re loving” - Lonely Planet’s video email marketing strategy.

The volume of email and newsletter marketing is soaring during the current Christmas season and we are seeing good examples of video and rich media implementations from retailers and online shops.

Take Lonely Planet, the most popular travel guide, for example. A couple of years ago they already started to use video on their website; they also started experimenting in a very early stage with user-generated video content allowing travelers to share their amateur clips with other users, integrating these videos very naturally in the community section of the web. Today, professional video content is a key to promote almost any destination at Lonely Planet’s sites.

The brand also understood that short videos help to curb relatively low conversion rates of email and newsletter campaigns, a format that has become less attractive, for some users even intrusive, especially in times when users prefer pull marketing in form of RSS subscription or social recommendations via Facebook or Twitter.

All week, Lonely Planet newsletters include at least 2-3 short video clips, like these from their latest newsletter on top Christmas travel destinations for example.

If you have video content think about if and how it could be used in your email and online promotion strategy because it it can help to make a good old newsletter look attractive again. A study of MarketingSherpa said already back in June 2008 that embedded video in emails have the potential to increase conversion rates up to 50%!