- What's going on, everyone?
My name's Larry Snow and in this video
I'm going to be showing you how to embed a YouTube video
in Mail Chimp.
That's coming up next, so stay tuned.
So I thought I'd do this video to help those
that were asking questions on how to actually embed
a YouTube video in a Mail Chimp email
that you're gonna be sending out, a campaign.
And there were a lot of questions around that
in my previous video, which was right above us
here somewhere as a link for you to go check that out.
It was actually talking about the new landing page
creator that Mail Chimp came up with.
So there were a lot of questions there
and I'm, in this video I'm gonna take a look at
how to add a video in the best way possible.
It's actually not technically embedding a video
in a Mail Chimp email, it's actually a work around,
because that's all we have to go with
with Mail Chimp.
And there are three ways that I came up with,
maybe you have more than that and we're gonna
take a look at those three ways,
how I set them up and what they look like in an email,
what they look like in a preview
and what the differences are there,
because there are some that you really want to know about.
So stay to the end of the video where I talk
about that.
And for now, let's get started on putting in our videos
in a Mail Chimp campaign.
So I've already got a test campaign set up,
it's one of the featured ones that Mail Chimp
provides for us and
very simple, I've added in my logo.
Obviously, you'd be going to town on this,
might be putting in calls to action,
putting in a whole bunch of stuff to make it more
enjoyable for your reader.
For us, as a testing type of thing,
we are just putting in
what we need to do for this video, okay?
So, you'll notice here I've got one here
that kind of looks like an image
but has an overlay of, it looks like a play button on it.
The next option I, here,
the next option I have here,
it looks like a bunch of gobbledygook,
a bunch of code,
and then we have an image, what looks like an image,
and it actually is an image.
Let's start with that option.
If I click on this to edit it,
and we'll click on the link part,
we actually see a link to the video.
And so what happens is,
what happens is that when you click on that image
in your email,
it will be, it will take you to the video.
Simple, easy enough, it will take you right over
to YouTube.
If we put in an Alt tag, this is what I like to do,
and you'll see why
and the end of this video, as I promised,
you'll see the differences when we send this out
in an email.
So we do watch, let's see,
click to watch
video.
Alright, update.
Save and close.
So there's really nothing to that.
I grabbed over at image block and that's it,
I uploaded an image, my thumbnail that I use
for the YouTube video
and I added in an ALT tag and the link to the video.
Let's go to the top one.
This top one is actually a video block.
So here's the video block, I just drag that over,
I love the drag and drop of Mail Chimp.
And it gives you some options to put in.
Now this only will work for YouTube and video,
actually will auto-generate the thumbnail image
of that video and it will put that little overlay on it.
So that's all there is, and then I added in some
caption text here for a call to action.
You look down here, it says click to watch the video
and learn how to monitor your company on Facebook.
So it gives a clear indicator to actually click
and to watch
and that's something that you want to be aware of.
Now if I click on here again
and I click on an ALT
and it has the actual title in here,
how to create landing pages in Mail Chimp
with the new landing page creator.
That is the,
that is the direct title that I have for the video
on YouTube,
so you can update that if you want,
you can replace it,
it's up to you.
Save and close that.
Now the third one and the, probably the more kind of
more fuzzy one that a lot of people aren't familiar with
is something called the video merge tag.
And for that,
I went over to the knowledge base in Mail Chimp
and looked at Add Video to a Campaign,
which they've outlined very nicely to insert
Video Content Block,
which is what we looked at.
And then here's the Video Merge Tags.
So the basic format is the service
and the video ID.
Now the service is, in this case,
since we're talking about YouTube is YouTube.
So you put YouTube and replace service with YouTube.
The video ID is this right here,
so V equals whatever follows V equals is the video ID.
And you would grab that and put that into the code as well.
Let's go back to our knowledge base article here.
And so you can do this for Vimeo,
you can do this for BlipTV or,
it looks like it's a little bit more complicated for that.
Something called VZAAR, I've never even heard of,
good for them, and of course, Wistia,
which is, I'm more familiar with that as well.
And here is the video merge tag code
that I actually copied and paste and put into the
code,
I grabbed the code block over, dropped it in,
I took out what was in here, just deleted that
and I went over to here, I've added this,
copied it in
like that and then further down they talk about
video merge tag options, also known as parameters,
how you can add in different things,
you can remove the border, remove the title,
trim, add in ratings, remove ratings.
And then you can
grab this piece of code here which actually puts in
some of those options and that's exactly what I did.
And that's what you see here, alright.
So we have a max width of 600 because the email is 600,
we have ratings set to no, views set to no.
You can actually put in the views how many views you've got
on YouTube on here.
If you wanted to have a border,
if you wanted to have the title in there,
since I already kind of have the title
in there,
you know, I don't really need the title
and I can trim the border.
So all that is in there, it's all set and ready to go.
Now let me just remove this one so we don't get confused.
So I will leave the link to this knowledge base
article in the comments below for you to take a look at
and review for yourself for the services
that you want to add to your Mail Chimp Campaign.
Alright, now let's click on Preview.
I love that they have a preview option.
They have a desktop, mobile and inbox version
where you can actually use the live merge tags
for recipients.
So, on desktop,
this is what it's gonna look like
in the browser.
So this is our
video block, right?
So if I click on that it will open up and
go right to YouTube.
This is our code, this is our merge tag code.
And it kinda like, looks like a YouTube video, right?
It's a little smaller, I could probably make it
a little bigger and the width,
max width size and all that,
but it has a better play button in the middle,
actually physically looks like a YouTube video.
And here's my ALT tag that says watch the video.
Alright,
so I can go in there and if I click on that it'll go
right to YouTube as well, okay.
And the last one is just a simple image and
what I did on the image,
actually I put it below,
it says click on the image above to watch the video.
So I had to physically put in a text block to put in
a call to action for a person to understand
to actually click the image to play the video.
Alright, so that's what they look like in,
on the browser.
Let's see what it looks like in the email,
and here's where things will be different.
So I'm gonna send a test email to me.
Now we'll just wait a couple of seconds until it
shows up in my inbox.
Alright, here it is in my inbox and this is
what people will see.
The reason why people are seeing this is because
I haven't verified my domain
with my email address.
So if I had Larry@larrysnow.me
and I've
taken the option to verify my domain
through the server, putting in some C names
and some other pieces of stuff that you need to do
on the server side, I forget what it's called right now,
but it's something that you have to do to verify
with Mail Chimp that that is the domain that you have.
Once you do that,
your images by default will be displayed in your emails.
Until then,
because we are
using images basically
wrapped around in code
that when clicked will take you to YouTube,
those images won't show up by default in your email.
And this is where your
ALT tags will come in.
So if a person comes across this in their inbox,
they're like what the heck am I looking at,
there's a whole bunch of gobbledygook here,
I don't understand what I'm supposed to,
oh, watch the video.
So if you had text above this that said, you know,
this is the video,
this is what it's about and we're doing great things
and, you know, if you wanna take a look at our product,
our services, whatever it is that you're trying to push,
or not push, whatever it is you're trying to communicate
to your mail list, put all that above that,
obviously, right?
So there's more of an emphasis on what's coming next.
And so there are two ALT tags here that we put in, right?
Watch the video,
which is the code that we put in, the merge tag code,
and the second one was
the image,
which is click to watch the video.
Now if I click that,
pops open YouTube.
If I click on this one,
it pops open YouTube, I don't even,
it doesn't even take me to YouTube.
It just pops it open on my screen to watch the video.
And here is the video block.
Now because I have a black, kind of blackish brownish
background on it, you can hardly see it
but that will do that too.
That ALT tag.
How to create landing page.
Now if I put in click to the video to watch it
and change the styles a little bit,
you could probably see that, too.
So, be careful what you're sending in emails.
Maybe it's better,
with this in mind,
maybe it's better to just have them go to YouTube.
Put in the link to go to YouTube.
Put in a link to go to your website that talks a little bit
more about the video and that type of thing,
rather than trying to force something to play
in the
email.
Something to keep in mind, okay.
So I want to thank you all for watching the video,
I hope this video has helped.
I hope this has answered some of those questions
that were popping up on how to add a,
on the previous video I did for the landing page creator.
And as always, thank you so much for supporting
this channel.
If you like the video, give it a thumbs up.
If this is your first time here,
welcome and if you're really motivated,
click the Subscribe button, that would be fantastic.
And for more about me, go to LarrySnow.me
and I'll see you in the next video.