Embed Video in Email
One of the most requested features of any email client is the ability to embed video directly into the email's body. As available download speeds increase and video software becomes more sophisticated and accessible, digital videos have become employed on a huge scale. Videos can be used for everything from sharing a home movie to creating a presentation for a client or colleague. However, there is currently no direct support for embedding videos into email bodies; learning how to effectively embed video in email is rather a question of learning how to smoothly integrate a video link.
Steps
- Navigate to the location where the video is hosted. Your video needs to be hosted online to be embedded in the email. Begin by navigating to its web page on YouTube or another video-hosting site.
- Take a screenshot of the video. While on the video's web page, use the "Print Screen" button to take a screenshot of the video. You can move the play marker to make sure the video is paused during an attractive screenshot. Open this screenshot in any image editing program to crop it to size. Make sure to leave the video player controls visible in the picture.
- Position a "play" button onto the screenshot. Using an Internet image search, find an image of a "play" button. Save this image onto your computer, and then load it into the image editing program with the screenshot file open. Position the "play" button over the center of the screenshot, adjusting its transparency (alpha channel) if desired. Save the image.
- Place the image into your email body. After writing your email, use your email client's "insert image" tool to place the screenshot with the play button into your email.
- Link the image to your video's location on the Internet. After inserting the image, make it into a hyperlink that takes the user to the video's web page. You can do this with your email client's "hyperlink" tool, or you can code the hyperlink manually using HTML.
- Send the email. After creating the linked image, you can send the email. Your user will see the video screenshot with the "play" button, indicating that the video can be viewed by clicking the button. After clicking, the user will be quickly taken to the video's web page to watch it.
Tips
- If you are unsure of how the linked image will appear or function, send the email to yourself first as a test. If it is functioning correctly, send the email to your desired reader.
- If you must have truly embedded video in your email message, you can create an animated GIF image of the video. This image can be embedded directly, but has many drawbacks: the image quality will be poor, the playback can't be controlled, and the image will be initially blocked by most email clients anyway.
Things You'll Need
- Computer
- Internet access
- Image editing program
- Email client
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