How Video Email Marketing Can Improve Your Restaurant Branding

6 Min Read By Larry Corbi

There is no other visual that can communicate as effectively and quickly as video. Also, there is no other marketing medium that can reach your customers as best and as affordable as email marketing. In fact, 65 percent of small businesses use email to communicate with their clients.  Video email marketing makes a lot of sense. This is especially true if you wish to boost awareness about your restaurant, attracting new dine-ins, or enticing customers to keep coming back. 

Video Email Marketing: What is it and Why Should You do it?

This is not some special type of email marketing. It literally refers to the idea of adding videos to your email campaigns

So, why should you even consider adding videos to emails?

Well, for one, adding the word “video” in your email subject line can improve your click-through rate by 96%. It only means that people are more curious to see what is inside your email with videos. Users also see the information displayed in the video to be more valuable.

In addition, a report suggests that 95% of information is retained when people watch a video in comparison with only 10% from reading blocks of text. This means that the brain processes visual info more rapidly. Videos in emails can deliver all necessary info fast. 

Another bonus of using video email marketing is its indirect effects on your search engine rankings. Engaging videos are more likely to be shared on social platforms. As a matter of fact, videos can generate up to 12x more social shares than both images and text. This can increase your social engagement, which also boosts your brand in search engines.

Lastly, with time management tips, video email marketing can enhance the productivity of both receivers and senders. It provides info on your restaurant in less time and making complicated subjects easier to digest and understand.

How to Use Video Email Marketing for Your Restaurant Branding

Restaurants are always brimming with materials and stories that customers are hungry to discover.

Here are some engaging opportunities to feature in your videos.

1. Highlight Your Menu

Most customers want to look at the menu before heading to a specific restaurant to eat. With this in mind, you can highlight your menu items through a video. This way, you can strongly appeal to your customers’ hungry pangs and influence their dining decisions.

You can use video in your email to promote specialty drinks, seasonal menu items, employees’ or chef’s favorite dishes.

2. Entice With Recipe Videos

Recipe videos are some of the most popular keywords searched on the internet today. New research into Millenials eating up food videos on YouTube is proof of this. So why not capitalize on it?

Restaurants incorporating video email marketing strategies have a better chance of reaching a broader audience base. This means establishing a relationship that translates to profit.

Cooking demonstrations, recipe videos, and kitchen walkthroughs make educational and enticing content for subscribers. Creating diverse video content can help your restaurant’s branding and could even help establish your reputation as an industry leader. Consequently, it helps viewers to become more knowledgeable about your food.

Without giving away your restaurant’s secrets, you can:

  •  Film recipe videos inspired by your restaurant’s take on revered or classic dishes

  • Seasonal recipe tutorials

  • Spins on local cuisine or twists on your staple menu items

  • How-to instructions on handy kitchen gadgets, utensils, and more 

3. Introduce Your Staff

Your staff is an indispensable part of what keeps your restaurant serving. Unfortunately, guests rarely, if ever, get to know the people who greet them as they arrive, wait at their table, or prepare their mouthwatering meals.

Customers expect and want exceptional customer service. So, by watching videos that introduce your restaurant’s staff, customers can learn more about them. This makes them more likely to trust your business and expect positive interaction with your staff.

Restaurant videography can act as a platform to show off your:

  • Staff’s personalities

  • Career history

  • Culinary motivations

  • Top picks or favorite dishes and cuisines

  • Foodie secrets and tips

4. Sharing Your Restaurant’s Story

Most guests won’t know the story of your restaurant and its history. They usually don’t have any idea of the culture of the neighborhood that your restaurant contributes to. Also, they won’t have any idea on how you honor such heritage unless you show them.

You can take guests on a quick video tour of your restaurant. This way, you’re able to make them feel excited to experience the place firsthand. If your restaurant is located within or around historical buildings or famous areas, locals will more likely appreciate discovering the culture and history of your restaurant and nearby landmarks. They are more compelled to support your restaurant once they see the value that it adds to the community.

You can use video to showcase your:

  • Restaurant’s building and neighborhood culture and history

  • Balcony dining, outdoor patio, indoor seating, rooftop bars or lounges

  • Upcoming renovations and recent restaurant updates.

5. Provide Proof

Guests come to your restaurant with high expectations and a hungry appetite. They are looking for a memorable experience and a solid plate of food. They want to dine at a restaurant whose service, ambiance, and experience can make a personal connection and satisfaction.

What better way to show them that you can provide all those than highlighting testimonials from your loyal customers themselves and forge a lasting impression?

You can create videos that include:

  • Customer testimonials and reviews of their meals and experience

  •  Memorable experiences at your establishments such as birthdays or weddings

  • Live customer samplings of new drinks and dishes.

6. Invitation to Events

Most restaurants host occasional parties and events as one of the powerful ways to promote a business. This is to increase awareness and reach a new audience while ensuring that existing customers keep on returning. 

When you host an event, you usually send out an invitation. Make your email invites more special, valuable, and intriguing by adding videos.

Whether it is a sneak peek of the upcoming event or a video that recaps last year’s event, video email marketing is a powerful tool to push the on-the-fence attendees through your restaurant doors. 

Incorporating Video into Emails

Now that you have an idea of what your video content to create for your restaurant’s marketing campaigns, here’s how you can add it to your emails.

1. Embedding Videos

Video content can be embedded directly into your emails. This way, readers can view a playing video without leaving their inbox. Thus, ensuring an efficient and great user experience.

Unfortunately, videos embedded into emails usually come with serious flaws. Due to security and spam restrictions, most email clients don’t support embedded videos. In addition, not all email clients— even big names such as Gmail, Outlook, or Hotmail—support the new HTML5 format.

A workaround is to embed a thumbnail or a GIF of a video and link it to your hosted video. You can also include a CTA such as “Click to view the full video here” and add a URL to the video. 

2. Using Video Thumbnail Images

In order to counter the faults of embedded videos, marketers usually use a video thumbnail image. This image links to a landing page where the video is published. When clicked, the reader is taken to YouTube, your website, or social platform to view that video.

While the video is not hosted in the email, it actually comes with awesome benefits. For one, it will definitely work, unlike with embedded videos. More traffic is converted from email to your website, which means more website interactions and more page views. Also, videos can be set to autoplay on your site or YouTube. 

Five Video Email Marketing Best Practices

Now that we’re done with the technical details, let’s talk about effective strategies and practices when adding videos to your email marketing campaign.

1. Include “Video” in Your Subject Line

As mentioned before, just by adding “video” to your email subject line, you can expect an increased rate of 19%. You can place it in brackets [Video] at the end or beginning of your subject line in order to make it clear.

2. Place It Below The Email Copy

Adding videos into your email can boost your open rates. Sometimes, though, the video can distract from your main message if not properly used. This is why it is advisable that the video is placed below the email message.

3. Reduce File Size

Large files can trigger spam filters. There is no particular pixel size to shoot for. However, Litmus suggests that well-optimized emails usually don’t contain over 2.7MB of image thumbnail. If you have a thumbnail that is larger, then you can compress or adjust the size with free tools.

If you’re directly embedding videos in your email, you still need to keep file size low so that it does not buffer.

4. Include a CTA

Never forget a CTA at the end of your video. You need to engage your viewers using some convincing power words when sharing the video on social platforms.

5. Test Before Sending

Video email marketing is a good practice; however, audiences and situations vary. Use A/B testing in order to see what converts better:

  • Static thumbnail or animated thumbnail?

  • Video or no video?

  • Less text or more text?

Record your results in the test log so that you can build upon and improve your video marketing campaign.

Video in email is not just some gimmick. It is quickly becoming a key factor in running effective email marketing campaigns. 

Adding video breathes new life to your email marketing. It is definitely an engaging way to bring compelling content to your subscriber, improving your restaurant marketing and branding, and boosting profit.