• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, March 22, 2024

Email is a major conduit for getting videos to customers. But it is hardly the only tool supporting video marketing, judging by the State of Video, 2024 Report, a study by Wistia. 

First, let’s look at the big picture. Of the firms surveyed, 93% rate video as an important part of their business. 

Moreover, 57% are investing more resources into video this year, and 38% are are remaining the same. Only 4% say they foresee a reduction.  

And audiences are responding: total plays have risen by 15% and hours spend by 44%. 

But it’s not easy creating videos. Marketing teams typically run into these challenges:

• Time and bandwidth — 61% 
• Team size, resources, technical capability — 44% 
• Cost and budget — 38%
• Ideas or content strategy — 32% 
• Remote collaboration and production — 15% 
• Buy-in from stakeholders — 11%

What do brands hope to gain? They use video for:

• Generating leads and driving sales — 38% 
• Product education and adoption — 31% 
• Brand awareness and PR — 17% 
• Social media engagement or followers — 8%
• No video strategy — 5% 

Can AI help? Maybe: While only 18% of the respondents are using AI tools, 66% want to try this year. AI would be useful for:

• Auto-generating captions or transcripts — 59% 
• Generating a script, outline or ideas — 50% 
• Generating visuals and music or fixing overdubs — 35% 
• Finding key clips to edit — 29% 
• Helping create social promotion copy — 28% 
• Don't use or plan to use AI tools for videos — 14%

In the meantime, here is how companies are using video. For starters, most offer videos via their websites and emails:

• Website — 67%
• Email — 49% 
• LinkedIn — 43% 
• YouTube — 40%
• Instagram — 22%
• Facebook — 19% 
• TikTok — 7%
• X — 4%

Engagement varies by vertical industry and length of the video. Here are the play rates by industry:

• Ecommerce — 13%
• Education — 46% 
• Financial — 13% 
• Healthcare — 11%
• Marketing — 18%
• Media — 44% 
• Services — 11%
• Technology — 22%

And the play rates by video length:

• 1 minute — 23% 
• 1-3 minutes — 12%
• 3-5 minutes — 17% 
• 5-30 minutes — 35% 
• 30-60 minutes — 50% 
• 50 minutes — 58%

Do marketers using videos conduct A/B tests? Yes, for these elements: 

• Different versions of a video (music, length, intro, etc.) — 31% 
• CTA or email form (placement or wording) — 26% 
• Two entirely different videos — 21% 
• Custom thumbnail — 18%
• Player design or color — 4%

Common sense dictates that email collection forms are critical. Yet only 19% see email collection forms as the most useful interactive video feature on websites. In contrast, CTA buttons are cited by 48%.

What works best when placing email forms? Shorter videos under five minutes have the best email form conversion rates, especially when the form is placed around the halfway mark.  

But you can move them back longer videos — those between 30-60 minutes. People who stick it out with those are interested in the content so the form can go at the end.  

Wistia surveyed over 2,000 professionals in late 2023. It also analyzed more than 90 million videos uploaded to its platform from 2013 to 2023.