Evidence continues to mount in the webosphere claiming video as the new “darling” of rich media content-types for marketers.

In their presentation titled, Video Email: When, Why, and How, the Email Experience Council (eec) offers an impressive list of video-in-email stats, making the case for video in email even stronger.

Here are some of the highlights:

• About 86% of Americans (180 million) viewed online video in August 2011, which was a 26% increase from the year before.
• By 2014, video may account for 50% of web traffic.
• According to Forrester, click-through rates in an email with video increase by as much as 2-3 times.
• Even before viewing the video, merely starting the subject line with ‘Video:’ can double the CTR.
• Meanwhile, inside the email, video brings the CTR up to 67% higher than an average campaign.

What these stats imply, is that if you’ve been holding out in the first half of 2012, you mustn’t let the rest of the year pass you by without giving some real, creative thought to the kinds of videos you could create and distribute in your email campaigns.

Not sure how to start including videos in your emails? You’re not alone. Video email is still a relatively new concept for marketers to wrap their heads around. It’s not that they can’t see how effective it is, it’s just that the implementation is somewhat baffling considering that the vast majority of email platforms today don’t really support rich-media marketing emails, like Video emails.

But the technology to easily enable video in email (as well as other rich media) is already here, which means that if you’re a marketer who isn’t taking advantage of the new technology or even thinking of taking advantage of it in the near future, then for you, increasing email CTR by as much as 67% will most likely continue to be something you hear other marketers raving about.