Over the years, I have seen many vendors that claim you can put video in an e-mail. And for years I have always hoped for this to be the truth. But alas, all they did was place a picture in an e-mail with a link to the actual video on a Web page. Not really video “in” an e-mail.

(sigh)

But there looks like there is hope on the horizon. CampaignMonitor.com, a leading provider of e-mail distribution, did some testing with HTML 5 to place video “in” an e-mail. If anybody could figure it out, these folks can.

Here is the link to the article explaining the code behind it:

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2905/html5-and-video-in-email/

So let me de-geek this for you.

The Good:

The technique outlined enables you to embed an .mp4 video file in a page using the <video> tag that is supported by HTML 5. In addition, it allows you to place a “fallback image” if the e-mail client doesn’t support the video tag. So if you can’t play the video, you will see an image in its place. This technique is typically done for Flash elements when the user of a site does not have the proper Flash plug-in.

The Not so Good:

This only works with a very limited amount of e-mail clients. According to their tests, it is only supported by Apple Mail, Entourage 2008 and MobileMe. Needless to say, unless your client base is made up of heavy (very heavy) Mac users, this would not be a viable option.

So for now, keep dreaming of a future where all your subscribers can view video in an e-mail. It will happen one day, so keep your eye on these developments.

Filed under: Digital

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