Fixing Mailchimp Video Embeds

July 7, 2020 / in Blogging, How To / by Jason Terry

If you think back to last week, you probably learned something worth sharing. It could have been a new trick with your accounting software, a keyboard shortcut on your computer that saves time or an app for your mobile phone that helps you remember to dos. If something comes to mind, send it to me. If I use it, you will be featured in that blog post!

Which leads me to my story for this week… fixing Mailchimp video embeds, courtesy of my friend Ann Holliday at the Downtown Council of Kansas City (DTC).

RSS to Email Campaigns in Mailchimp

A few weeks ago, I did a project with the DTC that allows them to put blog posts on their website that automatically get sent as emails to certain groups of contacts in their Mailchimp email newsletter system. This is not only a significant time saver, it also makes it easier to get news and information out quickly to multiple channels. And since it’s easier, they will be able to communicate timely news even more often.

One of the most recent emails that went out had a video embedded in it. It looked great in their blog post, but it didn’t show up at all in their Mailchimp email newsletter. Why? Because of technical mumbo-jumbo you probably don’t care about.

Ann at the DTC spent some time looking at the setup for the email campaign and noticed that there is an Auto-Convert Videos option in the settings. I hadn’t noticed this option before, so we turned it on and tested it out. It works! Now, when a video is embedded in a blog post that ends up being turned into an email newsletter, it comes across as a screenshot with a link to the actual video. Check out the image below for an example.

So thanks to Ann for digging in and suggesting we try this fix. I’m passing the knowledge on to you in case you’ve had any video embed issues with a Mailchimp email newsletter.

See how that works?

I learned something new this week that was worth sharing. I shared it and mentioned how I learned about the tip. This concept is a good strategy to use as one of your weekly blogs for your business. Teach people something. Make them laugh. Make them think. And you will stay top of mind.

Technical Mumbo-Jumbo

If you’re technical, here is what was happening and why it works now…

The RSS Feed from the DTC website contains the HTML code for a video embed. That HTML code is not compatible with a Mailchimp email newsletter. But when you check the option to Auto-Convert Video in the campaign settings, it scans content from your RSS feed and looks for any video URLs. If it finds a video URL, it grabs a screenshot of the video and puts that into the email newsletter content. That image is linked behind the scenes to the actual video. When someone reading the newsletter clicks on the image, a new tab is opened to the video at the video website (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)

Thanks for reading! If you need help with Mailchimp or blogging, let’s talk!