How to Make a Video Newsletter Using AI Puppets [ChatGPT + Puppetry]

Anyone can imagine their inbox flooded with newsletters. Some are informative, while others are snooze-worthy. But what if you could break through the clutter, boost open rates, and captivate your audience?

There’s a way – the video newsletter way! Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to make a video newsletter using AI puppets.

Does that sound you? Worry no more! We will share everything we know about making videos in newsletters and weaponizing emails to boost customer engagement. Let’s start.

What Are Video Newsletters?

A video newsletter is one of the most effective email marketing strategies.

It allows businesses to inform email subscribers of news and updates, promote new offerings, and boost brand credibility through well-crafted videos instead of traditional text-based email.

Video newsletters empower brands to leverage people’s addiction to video content.

After all, four in five individuals prefer watching videos to reading plain text.

Unsurprisingly, nine in ten companies consider videos an effective marketing tool, with 87% of marketers underscoring videos’ direct relationship to increased sales.

Interesting Read: 9+ Best Video Marketing Tools to Boost Your Results in 2024

How to Make a Video Newsletter

Creating a video newsletter is a cinch, although planning your video’s storyline requires brainstorming with your team.

Still, we streamlined the process to five super-easy steps to empower you to craft a compelling video newsletter to communicate with audiences and customers.

1. Determine the video content

Your first task is brainstorming with your creative and marketing teams about the video content.

You should start with your marketing objectives. Most businesses want to increase brand awareness, while others target lead generation.

For example, an explainer video is perfect for increasing the chances of website visitors and audiences becoming paying customers.

It “explains” a product or service, allowing target audiences to understand its relevance and importance in their lives.

Forbes says embedding well-crafted explainer videos in emails and landing pages can increase lead-to-customer conversions by 80%.

On the other hand, informative how-to-videos appeal to DIYers and people who love doing projects themselves.

For instance, you could create a “how to make your baby pic or dog portrait talk” video.

You could do company updates, customer testimonials, webinar/podcast invites, onboarding programs, and other video content.

Write the video script or storyboard to focus on the actual video creation later.

2. Create your video

You have several options.

Big-name brands often have a dedicated creative department to handle video production projects, including shooting, editing, polishing, and publishing.

However, small businesses need not worry because AI-powered video generators exist.

For example, Puppetry is perfect for beginner video creators, new business owners, and entrepreneurs.

The interface is straightforward, yet the platform offers enough customizations to create a stunning video for your email newsletter.

Pick a template

Some think that video templates are a lazy person’s tool for creating instant clips. However, making videos from scratch isn’t practical for a one-person business. It’s labor-intensive, could be costly, and requires days to weeks.

Video templates remove these obstacles, although you will want to pick the most appropriate style for your content.

3. Generate an AI puppet

Although you can create videos without presenters, having one is more engaging. The AI puppet is like your brand’s digital spokesperson talking to the email recipient.

You will want to choose a virtual presenter that suits your video topic or content.

Puppetry has hundreds of AI-generated images you can animate to become a video presenter.

Alternatively, you could generate one using the platform’s AI-powered image generator.

Add text to the video.

Remember the storyboard or script we mentioned in Step 1? Puppetry and other AI video producers have script boxes to accommodate text-based prompts.

Copy the text, paste it on the script box, and watch Puppetry synchronize the AI presenter to “talk” your text.

Like other platforms, Puppetry uses advanced text-to-speech technology to give voice to written words.

You could also get someone to do a voiceover, upload the audio to Puppetry, and watch your digital presenter come alive.

Here's a guide on how to use ChatGPT for Puppetry.

Edit your video.

Refine the video by adding visual elements and sound effects to it.

Replace the background with your favorite scene to make the video more appropriate to the content type or theme.

Add a musical score and special sound effects to make the clip more immersive.

Upload the video on multiple channels.

Some email platforms aren’t very forgiving when attaching or embedding videos in messages.

That’s why most businesses generate a video link first. They embed these links in email messages and newsletters.

On the other hand, some email clients offer greater leeway for email users.

Suppose your email client doesn’t allow direct embedding of videos. You could upload your creation to a video platform (i.e., YouTube, TikTok, or Vimeo) and generate a video link and thumbnail.

Save these on your computer to embed later in the newsletter.

4. Design the video newsletter

Designing a video newsletter is more convenient with a template.

You could develop one from scratch, too.

However, we recommend checking out examples to learn how to make it.

If you choose a template, you can choose email newsletter software and use its template collection to generate a video newsletter.

You can try MailChimp, Zoho Campaigns, FloDesk, and Omnisend.

5. Embed the video to the email

You have several options for inserting videos into newsletters and email messages.

Most businesses and digital marketers convert the clip into a GIF file, allowing for seamless email embedding.

Alternatively, you could transform the video into HTML5. This trick works well for email recipients using Apple Mail, iOS Mail, and Microsoft Outlook.

Unfortunately, Gmail and other email clients might not support video-in-email embedding.

The good news is that you can integrate your video link and add a “play button” in an image file. Attach the image to your Gmail message, and voila!

Regardless of the video insertion method, please give your email recipient a heads-up.

Please avoid pasting your YouTube video links or embedding a video file into the email message without informing your receiver what it’s about.

After all, nobody wants to open suspicious files and click doubtful links. That’s not effective (and entirely dubious) video marketing.

SEE: Personalized Video Generators: Empowering Your Outreach Campaigns in 2024

Video Newsletter Use Cases in 2024

Creating video newsletters is a cinch with our simplified 5-step process. However, you might want to check out the following video newsletter types that are applied in real life. These examples should help you ace Step 1 in our process.

Company update video newsletters

These clips are perfect for keeping customers up-to-date with company or product developments. It helps them stay in the loop and make better, more informed decisions.

For example, are you launching a new product?

How about an upcoming version release?

Is there a special gathering or event you want customers to participate in?

Testimonial video newsletters

It’s difficult to convince people how good your product or service is.

They think you’re only cherry-picking – highlighting (and sometimes bloating) only the product’s strengths while ignoring its downsides.

Getting people to lend credibility to your offerings makes sense.

That’s the beauty of testimonial videos.

Potential customers are more likely to buy a product if real persons not connected to the company share their positive experiences about the product.

Onboarding video newsletters

Besides the thank-you note you send to a customer for recently buying a product, you can send them an onboarding video.

It’s like an orientation program for new employees, except you focus on new customers.

Onboarding videos occur in a series, never a one-off.

The first clip could introduce the brand in deeper detail to the new customer.

The second video might deal with product features, functions, and benefits.

How-to guides are crucial for onboarding video newsletters, especially for highly technical products.

For instance, customers who receive a free software trial will want to know how to navigate the interface, access its features, and optimize the outcomes.

Tutorial video newsletters

These video newsletters can be part of the customer onboarding program or as a continuing service offering.

It’s perfect for helping customers maximize a product’s unique features, using it in unimaginable ways.

Benefits of Video Newsletters 2024

We mentioned that video newsletters are better than text-only versions.

But do you know how such strategies can benefit your company?

Here are some compelling reasons to make and send video newsletters to audiences and customers.

Builds trust

Did you know word-of-mouth marketing accounts for 93% of all buying decisions?

That’s the power of testimonial videos.

People trust others who have direct or first-hand experience using the product.

Testimonials build trust in your brand.

People who trust your brand tend to stay with you for life.

Look at Apple! It doesn’t matter if the queue is long on opening days or if the latest iPhone is expensive. They trust the brand.

Drives more website traffic

Brand trustworthiness and credibility can generate greater brand awareness.

Did you know that 16 in 25 consumers buy products after watching a related video?

Even if they didn't buy anything, they would be curious to learn more.

Curiosity drives people to search for answers. They will use Google to find your brand and learn more about your services and products.

Some will use online credibility and trustworthiness scoring platforms (i.e., TrustPilot) to check your business.

These activities drive more traffic to your website and give you more opportunities to convert these leads into customers.

Boosts click-through and conversion rates

Experts say marketing emails with video clips embedded have two to three times higher click-through rates than video-less emails.

The higher the click rates, the more opportunities to convert audiences into customers. Why?

People appreciate videos more than plain text.

It grabs their attention and makes it easier to encourage audiences to act (i.e., click the video thumbnail). That's click-through. If the viewer buys after watching the entire video, that's a win for you.

Tips & Tricks for Creating an Engaging Video Newsletter

Let’s look at some tips and tricks to make your video newsletters more appealing and engaging to audiences and customers.

• Know your customers – Personalized video newsletters are the best. After all, nobody likes watching a video that doesn’t resonate, or audiences don’t feel is relevant to them. Hence, send video newsletters only to a select group (i.e., onboarding videos for new customers or company update clips for existing clients).

• One topic, one video – Please avoid cramming everything into a single video. Pick a topic, create a storyboard you can deliver in a minute or two, and develop the video.

• Spice it up– Add attention-grabbing visuals, sound effects, and musical score. You might want to A/B test these elements to determine the most effective strategy to guarantee open rates.

How to Improve Click-Through Rate

Video newsletters boost click-through percentages. But do you know how to guarantee this or increase the chances of email recipients clicking the embedded videos? Here are some tricks.

Add the word "video" in your email subject line.

Nobody likes surprises. Adding the word “video” in the email subject line informs recipients about what they can expect.

It also shows you respect their right to open or refuse to open your email.

This technique increases email open rates by at least six percent. It’s not huge, but you’ll have six in a hundred chances of audiences opening and reading the newsletter.

Include a CTA in the subject line.

This trick improves the “video” addition in the subject line. You could write “Watch Video” to give audiences a clear direction of what you want them to do.

Keep it short.

Email clients limit file attachment sizes (i.e., 25 MB for Gmail and 20 MB for MS Outlook).

Moreover, nobody wants to turn their email client into a video platform. They only need snippets of videos they might be interested in watching. Attention span can be an issue, too.

Unsurprisingly, experts cannot agree on the ideal video newsletter length. Some say two minutes is too lengthy, while others consider five minutes the absolute no-go zone. Still, others think one minute is the ideal.

Interesting Read: 5 Video Marketing Trends To Watch Out for in 2024

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best video newsletter platform for beginners?

We recommend MailChimp because it has an extensive newsletter template collection and a user-friendly interface.

Small businesses and new business owners will also find its free plans ideal, allowing them to save enough money for more robust email marketing programs.

How to insert a video to a newsletter?

Determine whether your email client allows or supports embedded videos.

If not, you can insert animated GIFs or thumbnails with video links to your email.

Email recipients will see and click the image, and a video platform (i.e., YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok) or landing page will open.

Audiences can watch and appreciate the full video from these channels.

How to increase video newsletter engagement?

Personalization goes a long way to ensuring higher video newsletter engagement rates. Create video storyboards with a friendly tone and make your AI avatar/presenter look very approachable.

Check out this guide about video sales letters using AI to learn more.

Conclusion

At a time, making a video newsletter demanded specialized skills and equipment. Not anymore. AI-powered technologies like Puppetry enable ordinary people to create stunning, personalized videos they can embed into emails and digital newsletters. Seeing your business grow is more certain than ever.

Try our AI puppets for video newsletters today!