Video Messages & E-Newsletters

I receive a lot of e-newsletters from advocacy groups. Quite frankly, most of them are pretty boring. Lots of text, few (or no) graphics, redundant information - a lot of groups take the same "email Congress" approach, and poor branding. Some groups send e-newsletters either too frequently, or so infrequently that I forget that I'm a subscriber.

So when I received an e-newsletter today from Gathering of the Vibes, a music festival that I attended this past July with HeadCount, in Bridgeport, CT, with an embedded video in it, I got very excited:)

The e-newsletter was a pretty typical update from Vibes - 2009 festival tix now on sale. But along with the text and some photos, there was a still photo of a video message from Ken Hays, and text beneath the video indicating that the video was clickable.

I would have been SUPER excited if the video had played right then and there, but it didn't; instead, when I clicked on the still image, I was taken directly to a very clean page on the Vibes website, with an embedded video message from Ken. It was awesome - a very nice, personal touch. My only complaint is that the website didn't give me the option of embedding Ken's video in facebook, or on this blog, and didn't make it easy for me to forward the video to a friend.

Hopefully more groups will start using these embedded videos, in their e-newsletters.