AL 017: How Do I Use Videos in My Newsletter?

AL 017: How Do I Use Videos in My Newsletter?

Liz Wilcox: What’s up? What’s up? Liz Wilcox here, and you’re listening to Ask Liz. I’m really excited that you are here. And if you’ve been enjoying this, can I be shameless and ask you to leave a review? Listen, I am brand new to the Smart Passive Income podcast, and I am still nervous whether or not you like it. So leave a review, good or bad.

Sean: I would love feedback so I can actually make content that you like. But let’s get into it. This Ask Liz episode is going to be a good one, but also a short one. So let’s hear it.

Hey, Liz, it’s Sean here. I had a big question for you since you are the email master. I’d like to start sending out emails that feature more videos than written texts, but I do know that email delivery can be a bit finicky.

Are there any best practices that you could share with us, uh, for ensuring better delivery to people’s inboxes for video that lives on YouTube but is delivered through Kit? That’s my question for the Ask Liz podcast. I’d love to know. Thank you.

Liz Wilcox: All right, Mr. Sean, I am so excited that you said you wanna put more videos in your emails.

I know, I know you’ve heard it all before, but video really is working right now. It’s more relevant and prevalent than ever. We’ve even got an episode with Doc Rock about why you as a creator should have videos. So I love that Sean is already thinking like, “Hey, I could just put my videos in these emails.”

Now, first and foremost, if you’re listening and you don’t know this, you can’t actually embed a video in email. So what Sean is talking about is, like probably just putting an image of the video and getting people to click on that image to go over to the YouTube video. Like he said, the video’s gonna live over on YouTube, right?

Or you could just hyperlink, you know, click right here to go to the video, right? So you can’t actually have a video play in email. What I love about email is that it’s been around since 1979, and not much has changed, okay? So we can’t actually put the video in there, but we can link out to it, right? So how do we make sure we are getting in the inbox, that deliverability?

Now, I’m not gonna go into all the techno mumbo jumbo, but what I wanna say is basically there’s internet gods, right? We’ve got Yoohoo, or not Yoohoo, that’s a chocolate drink that is very good. I meant to say Yahoo, right? We’ve got Yahoo, we’ve got Microsoft Outlook, Google, you know, we’ve got all sorts of internet gods out there, right?

And they’re the ones that are guarding whether or not you go in the inbox, spam, or you don’t get delivered at all. So Sean wants to get delivered, and he wants to go in the inbox. So what you need to do before and during these new video email thingies is to get people to click and to get people to reply.

Those are the gold standards that no matter what itty-bitty rules you might be breaking in the deliverability realm, you are still gonna go in the inbox, okay? You might hear about like all of these things that will get you in spam, but if you are getting clicks and you are getting replies, none of that matters.

That’s gonna do wonders with a capital W for your deliverability. So before you even think about your newsletter, right, ’cause Sean’s talking about his newsletter that he’s gonna send this out every week, his weekly newsletter, before that, you wanna talk or you wanna look at your welcome sequence. And does your welcome sequence get people to click?

Are there things to click on? Is it enticing? And you wanna get people to reply. So let’s talk about some of the best practices to do that. So inside the welcome sequence, in that very first email, you wanna get people to reply. So do, like, a PS yes or no question. It has to be a yes or no question. This is going to really help people actually reply.

If you asked an open-ended question, these people are brand new to your email list, they’re not gonna answer quite yet, okay? So we want to ask a yes or no question. For example, for the Smart Passive Income, the question that we ask in the very first email when you sign up for this email list, which you totally should do if you’re not on there yet, is, “Have you made money on the internet yet, even a dollar?

Hit reply yes or no.” And every single day when I go into Help Scout to answer our emails We have answers to that question. Yes, and no, but, right? Okay, so that’s really gonna help you, so make sure you have that in your welcome sequence. And then, a- also make sure you’re asking the y- yes or no questions in your newsletters, too.

So Sean sent a video out about, let’s say, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I don’t know what his business is, right? In the PS, he could say, you know, “Have you ever watched this show? Hit reply, yes or no,” right? We wanna get those replies, but especially important in the welcome sequence. That will train people to always reply, okay?

So yes or no questions. Also, getting people to click. Make sure when you hyperlink, like let’s say, you know, “Click here to watch the video,” some people might just hyperlink, link out to the word video. But you wanna hyperlink the whole sentence. “Click here to watch the video,” all of those words should be linked out to the video, okay? So making sure that the hyperlink is long, making sure throughout the welcome sequence or even in newsletters, there’s more than one link to click on.

Now, this could mean in a welcome sequence, you say, you know, “Here is my social media. Here’s my YouTube. Here is my favorite blog post,” and all of those, those are three different links to three different places. But let’s say in a newsletter, you just want them to click on the video about The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, you’re putting a picture of the video.

That’s clickable. You’re putting that sentence that we just said, “Click here to watch the video on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” And then maybe at the bottom, you know, “Hey, here’s that video one more time,” and you’re linking that whole sentence as well, right? So that it’s easy for people to click, right? It’s like, oh, maybe I didn’t click on the picture.

Maybe I wanted to keep reading, so I didn’t click on that first sentence, but now I’m at the end of the email, and Sean put the link one more time. I’m gonna click that one, right? Different strokes for different folks, different links for different … I wanna come up with something that rhymes, but I can’t.

Anyway, the original question was how do I work on that deliverability, and I want you to work on getting people to click, making sure there’s lots of different ways people can click, making sure those clicks are long, and getting people to reply by asking yes or no questions. All right, Sean, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

I’ll see you guys on the next episode.

Hey, hey, hey. Are you still there? Don’t go anywhere just yet because I’ve got something really good for you. You just listened to Ask Liz, duh, which means you’re serious about growing your business, duh, and I want to reward that. So here’s a little secret just for you.

The SPI community is where I hang out, and man, it is so good over there. You get access to the complete Superfans System, everything Pat Flynn has built to help you grow a real loyal audience that actually buys from you. Yep, it’s in there. We’re talking courses, playbooks, implementation guides, the whole shebang-a-bang, okay?

But my favorite part is that you and me, we get to work together inside my office hours. It’s not just you sending me in a question and me answering on the podcast, right? Inside my office hours, you can bring your emails, your business questions, your reels, whatever, anything that’s like, “Liz, what do I do about this?”

We’re going to work it out together every single week. Now, normally the SPI community, 99 bucks a month. But because you’re one of my people, use coupon code SECRET50 at checkout and you’ll get 50% off every single month for life, my love. That’s less than 50 bucks a month to get you the Superfans System, my office hours, and a whole community of entrepreneurs cheering you on.

Go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/2026 and use code SECRET50. That’s  SECRET50. Don’t keep it a secret though. Just kidding. Totally keep it a secret. This is just our thing.