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Unfortunately, it’s not possible to embed videos into ConvertKit emails directly. Even if it looks like it works in the browser preview, I promise you it doesn’t work when you actually send it. To avoid embarrassing, messy emails, I recommend you take a quick read of my blog post: How to get your formatting nice in ConvertKit emails.
But all is not lost.
Here are my 3 suggestions for putting videos into ConvertKit emails:
Update June 2020: It’s now possible to put a YouTube video into a ConvertKit email using the new email editor fairly easily. The options below are still nifty though, especially Option 2!
1. Upload a screenshot of the video and link to the video
Personally, I’m a big fan of embedding the video on your site and linking to that page on your site, not linking straight to YouTube (aka the black hole of cat videos). I love doing this because:
- You’re boosting the traffic to your site
- You can give them a clear CTA (call to action) for the next steps (e.g. buy the course, book a discovery call, etc)
- You can easily take down that video or change what’s on that page (e.g. a webinar recording)
- They may stay on your site a while and look at other things
That said though, there are certainly occasions where it may make more sense to link them straight to the YouTube video or the Facebook Live recording.
2. Upload a GIF of the video and link that to the video
I’ve got 2 options for creating GIFs:
And then here’s a quick video about adding a GIF to your ConvertKit email and linking it to your video:
3. Use MailChimp to sneakily put on a nice ‘play’ overlay
(You can also totally do this in Canva.)
When I was doing a MailChimp to ConvertKit migration recently, I noticed that MailChimp creates these nice little helpful preview images with nice overlay ‘play’ buttons. So I tried saving it and putting it into a ConvertKit email. It totally works!
If you’ve still got an old, free MailChimp account kicking around, here’s how you do it:
Final important note on putting videos into ConvertKit emails
If you’re using one of the above suggestions for including videos in your ConvertKit emails, make sure you also include a text link to the video. Why? Because some people have pictures turned off when they view their emails, and if the only link to the video was a picture… then you could have an awkward white space on your hands.
I hope you found this blog post useful. Please do let me know in the comments if you’re using video in your business or part of your marketing strategy! I love to see creative ways people set out their ConvertKit emails!
This is great. I especially like the part about sending them to a page on your website! Thx
Yes the embed on your site instead of leading them to youtube is excellent advice!
I like the idea of sending them to my website. Do I use a private page?
Depends what the video is for! I’d usually be sending them to just a regular page or a blog post or something. But you can also do a private page or a password protected page.
Thank you for your response. I should have been more specific. I want to do a video mini-course as my lead magnet. I was thinking they would opt-in and then get each video link by email. Since it is the opt-in I would want a private page I think.
Yeah, a private page sounds like a good idea. You can either use a page that’s not linked in a menu anywhere, or you can ‘hide’ it from Google with a plugin like YoastSEO (if you have a WordPress site, not sure about other site types).