Posted By: Jeff Pelletier Categories: Strategy Posted: November 21, 2013

5 Great Company Holiday Video E-Cards

A holiday e-card should engage, entertain, and enhance the recipient’s day. Static holiday e-cards do none of these things, so why not produce a video instead?

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. A fun, amateur production might go a long way with your customers and colleagues. But if your mailing list is large enough and you do have the budget, working with a professional agency couldn’t hurt.

Animated videos are a very effective way to capture the spirit and imagery of a particular holiday and even an on-camera greeting from your staff can work. Better yet, why not tell a story?

Here are 5 examples of great company holiday video e-cards to give you some ideas for next year.

5 Great Examples of Company Holiday Video E-Cards

1. ‘How to Make an Easy Gingerbread House’ from Howcast.com

Video ‘how-to’ website and platform HowCast sent out an email featuring a great tutorial video on How to Make a Gingerbread House.

The email took visitors to a custom landing page featuring other holiday-related how-to videos and the following promise: “Easy gingerbread house” may sound like an oxymoron, but our step-by-step guide turns this daunting holiday project into a cakewalk.

2. KOKO Productions Holidays 2011

KOKO Productions worked with agency DDB Canada Vancouver and Transmission Inc. to produce a short film that, while may be a little gross, is very well executed and got a fair bit of traction on YouTube.

The logline: Tis the season to make anything sound good. We mean anything, even this.

3. ‘HIKAKIN Christmas Beatbox’ from Voltage

Digital advertising and design firm Voltage from Louisville, Colo., got the incredible Japanese beatboxer Hikakin to perform Last Christmas for their holiday video. “You’ve never heard ‘Last Christmas’ like this before.”

The call-to-action was to ‘like’ Voltage on Facebook and the video was quite popular on YouTube. Amazing stuff!

4. Aristotle Interactive Christmas E-Card

This is a simple idea from agency Aristotle Interactive that wouldn’t take much to produce.

While something like this probably wouldn’t get much engagement on YouTube or other social media websites, it’s a nice way to represent the company in a fun and creative way for your existing customers.

5. ‘Nick Makes a Viral Video’ from Basetwo Media

A common joke in the industry is when a client tries to hire a company to make a ‘viral video’. While we’ve definitely never had a client anywhere near this difficult, we thought it would be fun for our 2011 holiday e-card video to imagine what it would be like to be challenged with this task by the jolly man himself.

The project was a great way to bring the team together on something fun and we sent the film out to our regular newsletter subscribers and client list.

Making the Most of Your Holiday Video E-card

  • Use an enticing and relevant thumbnail image in your email. It doesn’t have to be a freeze-frame from the video itself, but make sure it speaks to what viewers can expect to see when they click on the link.
  • Keep the email simple! There should be one primary call-to-action: to watch the video. Don’t clutter it up with a bunch of other content and offers.
  • Make a dedicated landing page for your video. It’s best to use the same video thumbnail for the starting frame of the video here that you used in your email.
  • Keep the video short. We typically recommend videos of this nature to be around 90 seconds in length. If it’s really good or tells a very engaging story, you could go a little longer.
  • Remember to post and promote the video on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to continue the conversation.
  • Don’t make it too promotional (enough said).

Have you seen any other examples of great company holiday video e-cards? If so, let us know in the comments below.