Adding Video to your Email

Adding Video to your Email

With the new Video block in Delivra Air, you can now embed live video directly in your email designs—adding movement, personality, and clarity to your campaigns. This block is ideal for marketers looking to boost engagement and convey more in less space.

How the Video Block Works

Delivra’s Video block is a drag-and-drop design element available in the email editor. It allows you to add a video by entering a publicly-accessible direct URL to an MP4 file. Once the video block is added, a thumbnail image is automatically pulled from the video. However, you can replace it with a custom thumbnail for full branding control. In either case, the thumbnail can be edited directly in the email builder, including adding a play button using the Sticker tool.


Videos will play directly within the email—but only in supported email clients. In all other clients, the thumbnail acts as a fallback image and opens the video in a browser when clicked.

InfoImportant: YouTube and other streaming services like Vimeo are not supported as video sources because they do not offer direct MP4 file URLs. These links lead to hosted pages rather than files that can be embedded.

Hosting Video Files with Delivra

If you don’t have an external hosting solution for your MP4 files, Delivra offers video hosting as an add-on service. This allows you to store and serve your videos directly from your Delivra account, making it easy to use them with the Video block.

Things to keep in mind:

  • Supported format: MP4 format only

  • Maximum file size: 20MB per video

If you're interested in hosting your videos within Delivra, please contact your Customer Success Manager to learn more about pricing and setup options.

Compatibility Across Email Clients

Supports Inline Video Playback:

Support for embedded video in email remains limited across the industry. The email clients listed below will support viewing the video directly in the inbox without needing to direct the recipient to another site.

  • Apple Mail (macOS and iOS)

  • Outlook for Mac (2016+)

  • Samsung Mail (Android)

  • Thunderbird

Does Not Support Inline Video (thumbnail fallback only):

These clients do not support playing video directly in the inbox. These clients will instead display your chosen thumbnail image with a link to your video location. Recipients who click the video thumbnail will be taken to the hosted video file or website (such as Youtube). We always recommend that you pick a thumbnail that is meaningful to your audience so they know to click it to see your video.

  • Gmail (all platforms)

  • Outlook for Windows

  • Outlook.com

  • Yahoo Mail

  • AOL Mail

Best Practices and Tips

Here are a few ways to optimize your use of the Video block:

  • Use a direct MP4 URL - these can be hosted on your server or via a file delivery platform. Video hosting with Delivra is also available, but may incur additional costs. Please contact your Customer Success Manager for more information.

  • Add a play button to the thumbnail - The image editor makes this easy with ready-made stickers.

  • Keep videos short and purposeful. We recommend under 30 seconds best for most use cases.

  • Include alt text describing the video content for accessibility and fallback scenarios.

If a significant portion of your audience uses clients that don’t support video, consider:

  • Linking the thumbnail to a landing page with the video

  • Providing a short summary or key takeaway in text below the video block

Practical Use Cases

The Video block can elevate a range of marketing initiatives:

  • Event or product launch teasers

  • Executive or founder messages

  • Product demo clips

  • Testimonials or customer spotlights

  • Quick tips or micro-training content



    • Related Articles

    • Regular campaigns

      You can create a campaign using a guided workflow that requires only a few steps to complete. If you are not there already, navigate to your Campaigns dashboard to begin. Click the “Create Campaign” call to action button to launch the guided ...

    • Automated welcome campaigns

      What is an automated welcome campaign? This type of campaign can be configured in your account to send automatically when specified. This type of email is sent to new contacts and is typically the first contact between you & a new subscriber. How are ...

    • Email Inbox Previews

      Email Inbox Previews allow you to see how your email will display across a variety of devices and clients before you hit send. Available on the Preview step of a campaign, this feature helps you catch design issues early and ensure a consistent ...

    • Confirmed opt-in email campaigns

      What is a confirmed opt-in email? This type of automated campaign is sent to confirm email subscription. There are two types: Single opt-in - A message to confirm that email subscription was successful & that they will begin receiving emails from you ...

    • Progress Bars in Email Campaigns

      The Progress Bar feature in Delivra brings a visually engaging way to display contact-specific progress toward a goal, directly within your email campaigns—no coding needed. Whether you're showcasing loyalty tier status, reward points, or program ...