A company recently presented a product to the company I am working at, which provides the ability to send embedded video within an email. According to www.vismail.com it is possible to embed a working video file within the email, and have around a 50% success rate with users viewing the video live in the email.

Apparently, around a 500k file is needed for a short decent film.

Sounds a bit dodgy to me. Firstly, I’d be surprised if this takes off and if it doesn’t annoy people. Lots of people turn images off because they like emails to be what they were always supposed to be; simple text messages. I think forcing video into an email might be considered a little intrusive to some.

Secondly, I am not even sure that those figures are accurate, and if 50% of users really would see it? Outlook 2007 and Gmail for sure won’t work. The conversation is ongoing in Campaign Monitor.