In today’s digital world, videos are a cornerstone of marketing and social efforts. YouTube, Vine (RIP), TikTok (RIP?), Instagram Reels, and other social platforms that allow native video uploads and playback have dramatically transformed the online marketing landscape over the past two decades. This FAQ explains how to incorporate videos into your campaigns and provides common troubleshooting steps if issues arise.
Video files are typically quite large, as you might expect. Even a short clip with sound can exceed the size of the largest, highest-quality images and documents. Most email programs don’t allow sending or receiving emails with more than 25 MB of attached files, including embedded images. Therefore, embedding large files, such as videos, into email campaigns is practically impossible. On social platforms, if you want the video to play directly on the site, you usually need to upload it to their system. This limits what third-party social platform managers can set up on their end.
The easiest way to include videos in your campaigns—emails, social posts, and landing pages—is to simply link to them. Whether you’re hosting your video on a dedicated video site, a social platform, or even a cloud drive, linking to it is the cleanest way to get the job done.
For emails and landing pages, the best way to include your videos is by using the video block. The video block works with a wide range of video hosting sites. It pulls the video’s thumbnail from the hosting site, adds a play button overlay, and links to the provided video URL.
You also have the option to link to your videos the same way you would with other links:
Sometimes, a URL may not be compatible with the video block. Here are some quick troubleshooting steps for such instances:
If the video is private, unlisted, hidden, or otherwise inaccessible to someone accessing the link without requiring a login.
You can check this by opening your browser in incognito or private mode and pasting the URL into the address bar. If you can’t access the video without logging in first, the URL won’t be compatible with the video block until you change the video or channel settings (if possible).
If the URL is shortened by the original site.
Some websites have unique and incompatible ways of shortening their URLs, which can confuse certain functions. You can usually resolve this by pasting the shortened URL into your address bar and then copying the full URL that appears.
If the URL is a redirect for the original link.
If you’re copying the URL from a source that has rewritten it for functionality (like click tracking), it might become incompatible with the video block. The easy solution is to navigate to the video on its host site and use the share URL provided or the URL that appears in the address bar after the redirect.
If there are excessive coded/tracking elements on the URL.
While this shouldn’t typically cause issues with the video block, some codes can conflict with the coding that reads the video’s source to pull thumbnail and other info. If you see a lot of question mark (?) and ampersand (&) symbols in your video’s URL, it’s best to remove everything, including the symbols themselves, that appear after the first one.
Sometimes, the host site can’t provide the thumbnail exactly as it was set, or there might be a problem with how the video block communicates with the host site. In these situations, you can try deleting and re-uploading the full video to effectively reset the data on the host site. Then, use the new URL provided by the host site.
If that’s not an option due to time constraints or because you can’t delete the video, try using one of the other available linking options, such as text, image, or button.
As always, if you have any general questions or need troubleshooting assistance, reach out to one of our available support channels, including our Community’s Questions & Discussions board. You can also email our team at social_support(at)constantcontact(dot)com, if you prefer.
