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Did you know that over 270 billion emails are sent every day? With so much content flooding our inboxes daily, it’s no surprise that audiences are going to be selective.
But what may be surprising to hear is that people actually want to get emails. 50% of recipients say they want to interact with content in their inbox (Litmus). They also crave a better experience; one more personalized, simple, and beneficial.
These motivations are what’s driving a new push by Google to ditch the boring, old school reputation of traditional email with a whole new inbox experience. And they’re doing it with AMP (Automated Mobile Pages) emails. Here’s everything you need to know about its potential, what it can do for marketers, and whether it’s right for you.
What are AMP Emails?
AMP for email is an open source technology that allows senders to include AMP components inside rich and engaging emails — providing modern app functionality within an email. As a subset of HTML components for email messages, it includes its own unique tags and parameters that allows recipients to interact dynamically with content without ever leaving their inbox.
While capabilities like that enable marketers to cut a major step out of the sales funnel, they also open the door to a world of possibilities for customer convenience and compliance. The only problem is that it’s a little too early to report its full potential.
A Little History
In February of 2018, Google announced their support for AMP with the new ability to integrate the AMP-powered interactivity to emails with Gmail. Over the last five years, they’ve improved it’s functionality with new capabilities and expanded to include AOL Mail and Yahoo Mail, as well as ESPs like Customer.io and SparkPost. But we’re still very much in the early adoption stage.
“AMP emails are certainly a buzzword in the marketing world, but it hasn’t exactly caught up to its hype just yet,” Emmanuel Ulloa, Interactive Developer at Assemble, explained. “It’s provided a framework of code that developers can implement into the CRMs their clients are using without having to start from scratch. Using existing tools, they can drag and drop a lot of components, making the development process a lot easier. But until it’s more widespread across email clients and providers, marketers are limited by whether or not their audiences can actually receive this type of ‘MIME type’ (HTML and text being the other two options) and if they have the tools to support its deployment. If a marketing team is interested in exploring AMP, there would have to be significant initial research involved to see whether it would really make sense for their recipients and their tech.”
How can Brands use AMP Functionality?
We don’t mean to burst your AMP bubble – the new tech is offering a lot of promise that, like most new tech, is bound to catch up to its bold promises eventually. And there are a ton of ways in which brands will be able to take advantage. From improving the onboarding experience, simplifying booking and appointments, making upsells and rewards more enticing, etc., all industries can enjoy the benefits. Here are a few things AMP can do:
- FormsGenerate and nurture leads with contact forms. Thanks to higher interactivity, conversion rates tend to be significantly higher than standard emails.
- SurveysConduct single and multi-step surveys to aid the data collection process with improved response rates. This includes NPS and CSAT questionnaires for customer feedback.
- Calendars / SchedulingBook meetings and send invites for product demos, support calls, appointments, and more through native calendar integrations from apps like Calendy and Zoom.
- Shopping CheckoutRecover abandoned carts by including a checkout option versus sending info of new items and offers. Payments can’t be made through email right now, but the sales funnel is getting a lot shorter.
- CalculatorsHelp inform financial decisions by allowing recipients to enter their specific information into a calculator to receive quotes and personalized options. Great for Fintechs, insurance companies, etc. to reduce friction in the estimation process.
- QuizzesMake your emails more memorable with interactive quizzes, games, and reward spinners or reveals.
Alternatives to AMP Emails
While AMP emails may not be right for your brand right now, if you’re eager to take advantage of interactive capabilities similar to AMP emails, there is another alternative that’s already making major waves: Interactive Emails.
Like AMP emails, interactive emails offer components that allow recipients to carry out specific functions directly in an email. Examples include hot spots, polls, hamburger menus, search bar entries, and more; basically all of thethings that a website can do. It creates an engaging experience that allows the recipient to take action with a brand without actually having to take that extra step to a landing page.
The difference is that interactive emails use pure HTML code, so dev teams can create interactive elements without adding any scripts. As a result, there are far fewer limitations as to what clients and providers can utilize them, meaning you can add awesome interactive elements with very little effort and very high confidence.
“At Assemble, we’re closely monitoring the process of AMP emails as more and more people are starting to realize what they’re actually capable of,” Emma shared. “As the opportunities grow and there are fewer limitations, we’ll be ready to help our clients create unique, engaging emails using this MIME type. But for now, we’re already full-steam ahead with interactive email content. It’s completely changing expectations for email marketing and allowing our clients to truly stand out amongst billions of emails opened daily in unique and more meaningful ways.”
To learn more about how to take your email marketing to the next level and give your audiences something to look forward to in their inbox, contact Assemble today.