Driving my daughter to ballet the other day, I passed a billboard advertising the new and improved Microsoft Outlook. “Get a better view,” the billboard said. “Watch videos directly from your inbox.”
It turns out that the new Outlook.com includes a feature called “Active Views” that allows users to view videos directly in their inbox rather than going to an external site like YouTube. If you’re a Gmail user, you’ll be familiar with these capabilities, as Gmail currently allows users to watch video at the bottom of each email. Active Views takes it one step further, with videos popping up to fill the screen of the inbox at the user’s command.
This is another example of how it’s becoming easier and easier for our audiences to watch short films and for us to distribute them. Given how pervasive Outlook is, one can only imagine that the majority of email users will soon be watching videos directly from their inboxes. Every time you hit “send” you can now increase the distribution of a short film and thus further your impact.
Here are a few specific ways to leverage the opportunity:
- Embed video in your email signatures
An email signature is a brief message that automatically gets appended at the end of all outgoing messages. Most people use this space to provide their title, phone number, and email address. Why not drop in a link to a film that illuminates your organization’s latest efforts? This way you can distribute a video with every email you send, even if you don’t mention it in the body of the message. The actual short film can be exchanged regularly.
- Integrate video into your subscriber emails
Leverage the mass-emails you are already sending to include your films. Drop in a piece that educates, inspires, or offers insight. Even if you don’t write the mass-email in Outlook, if you include a link to a video, your audience members who do use Outlook will now automatically be able to watch that video directly in their inbox.
- Direct e-mail communication about a short film
When you finish a short film, consider sending an email directly to your audience about that film. Like a micro-film release, you might include some complementary information about the film like why you produced it, bios of the featured people, some behind-the-scenes anecdotes.