Inbox Insider: Partnerships clear the way for video in e-mail marketing

Industry experts have chatted about using video in e-mail marketing for years, but the technology was held back by deliverability and bandwidth issues. Yet these days, e-mail service providers are conquering those challenges. They’re more often coming to the table with video e-mail solutions, a result of their partnerships with video vendors, as well as e-mail deliverability tools that bypass the former technical issues.

For instance, Goodmail Systems announced a partnership with Liveclicker, a video and e-commerce technology company, last week. They have combined Liverclicker’s video commerce application with Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail platform, calling the result CertifiedVideo.GIF. The product follows Goodmail’s CertifiedVideo, launched last year, which certified senders can use to bypass ISP filters and deliver e-mails with videos within them.

Flimp Media, a video services firm, struck allegiances with two e-mail marketing companies in the past week. Flimp is working with Delivra and iPost to help marketers more easily link to videos within e-mail messages, aiming to address the technical issues of e-mail and video by the use of a hosted site.

Video is poised to become even more common on the Web, so consumers will see this channel merged with e-mail, which is one of the most used online marketing channels. As we see more brands using YouTube and other online video sites to promote their products, expect to also see these promotions in e-mail messages.