Interactive Emails
Interactive emails are an important part of your sales and marketing campaign. They can help engage potential and existing customers while making it easier to push them down the sales funnel.
Knowing how to create, manage, and implement interactive emails can help you streamline your marketing efforts and achieve an impressive 3600% ROI. Let’s take a closer look at what interactive emails are all about.
What is an Interactive Email?
Interactive emails are email messages that contain special elements that allow the recipient to interact with the content. For example:
- Surveys
- Product ratings
- Quizzes
- Games
The recipient gets an opportunity to interact with the content without proceeding to the website. By clicking or tapping, they are engaging with your brand and learning more about your offers.
You can send a quick video inside the email that addresses the customer’s pain point. This can convert them on the spot. Essentially, your email messages turn into an extra landing page that does conversion work in a personalized manner.
Creating an Interactive Email
An interactive email should be fun, informative, and engaging. It should also abide by the rules of the CAN-SPAM act. Remember, by adding elements to an email, you could be increasing its size which could cause it to bounce.
If the email takes a long time to open, the recipient may not have enough patience to wait. They could send the message to the trash folder, or worse, mark it as spam. That’s why it’s imperative to test the email before sending it to customers.
Some of the most popular interactive email elements include:
Buttons
Buttons are the most popular interactive element. Some companies include several buttons for each interactive email. The main purpose of this element is to help the customer take action without taking any additional steps.
Buttons usually direct the user to the relevant landing or product pages. They can also lead to social media accounts or your Google My Business profile.
It’s important to be careful about overdoing the buttons. Just like CTAs, too many buttons could divert the user’s attention from what you want them to do.
Image Carousels
Images are an important part of any marketing and sales efforts. However, stuffing many pictures in one message can have the opposite effect. That’s why one of the types of interactive emails is image carousels.
These carousels contain several images that replace one another inside the messages. The recipient can choose the image they like with just one click without leaving the interactive email.
Image carousels usually come with special buttons that simplify navigation. It’s a great interactive email element for online stores that want to promote several products.
Countdown Timers
Email marketers can now take advantage of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). To capitalize on FOMO within an interactive email message. If you have a limited-time offer, you can insert a countdown timer in your email.
Countdown timers come in all shapes and sizes. They can look like a clock or a calendar, depending on your needs. When the recipient sees valuable time slipping away inside the email, they may make a quicker decision about purchasing something.
Flip Cards
Do you want to add some mystery to your email message, thus piquing the reader’s interest? You can do it by implementing flip cards. Flip cards contain information on both sides and flip when clicked on.
There are many different ways you can use a flip card:
- To provide extra information about a product
- To give a customer a personalized discount
- Share more pictures
Flip cards are easy to implement. They make your email appear more intriguing and encourage the reader to take action.
Gamification
Adults love to play games as much as children do. By adding a small game to your email message, you are bound to score some points. From spinning the wheel to get a discount to chasing a character across the screen, all gamification elements are fun.
If you can turn your offer into a game, action is likely to follow. While these elements are rarely cheap, they have a high ROI for your marketing campaign.
Polls and Surveys
Polls and surveys are great ways to collect information about your audience. However, searching for a survey on your website isn’t something a visitor is likely to do. Meanwhile, a quick poll inside your email message can do the trick.
The keys to surveys and polls are conciseness and speed. You can achieve both by implementing them into a short email.
You can analyze the data you collect from these surveys to improve your email marketing efforts.
Videos
Over 80% of consumers report that a video convinced them to buy a product. However, searching for these videos is time-consuming. You can provide a product video directly in the email message and give the consumer all the necessary information on the spot.
Be careful about inserting videos into your email messages. They can turn a small message into a hefty email. You would need to compress the video without losing its quality.
Reasons to Send Interactive Emails
Interactive emails can improve your email marketing efforts by catching the recipient’s attention and preventing them from closing the message and sending it to the trash folder.
This contributes to the possibility of enjoying a 3600% ROI of email marketing and helps you achieve higher conversion and retention rates. Interactive emails come with the following benefits:
Higher Conversion Rate
21st-century consumers are overwhelmed with offers. They can get hundreds of promotional emails every day. All of them look alike and usually end up in the trash, or worse, spam folder.
Interactive emails pique the readers’ interest and keep them with your message for a while. This allows the consumer to get to know your brand better and increases their chance of a conversion.
As a result, you boost engagement and can get more qualified leads, who are ready to stay with your company and take steps toward conversions.
Higher Click-Through Rates
More than 80% of email recipients prefer messages with interactive elements. When they see an interactive email, readers are highly likely to engage with it, especially if the content is well-placed and personalized.
Since interactivity drives the recipient’s actions, it’s likely to lead to a micro-conversion step. If the subscriber eventually clicks the link inside the email and ends up on one of your landing pages, they increase the CTR and the number of website visitors.
More Valuable Data
Every time a recipient interacts with your email, you get valuable data to use for further marketing efforts. The more elements you put into the messages, the more information you can receive about a person who interacts with them.
By implementing special tracking codes, you can see where users click within the message. Meanwhile, emails that contain polls and surveys can also collect useful data and feedback that can improve your sales and marketing strategy.
Increase Brand Awareness
An average person gets more than 100 emails a day. Many of them are promotional. Making your messages stand out is tough work. By adding interactive elements, you are improving your chances of standing out from the crowd.
With interactive elements, you are streamlining the user experience and helping them learn more about your brand. Even if the user doesn’t convert immediately, they are likely to remember your style and open the email next time to see what new interactivity you came up with. This can also improve your open rates.
Return to Abandoned Carts
Abandoned cart emails are an essential part of retargeting. When a customer leaves the website without buying, you have one chance to get them back with an automated email. If this email contains interactive elements, it’s more likely to get the customer back.
For example, you can show the product the customer abandoned inside a message, insert a video explanation of its benefits, and add a link that leads the customer straight to checkout.
More Reviews
Reviews are an essential part of any marketing campaign. Today, 95% of buyers read reviews before making a purchase decision. Different interactive elements in your email message can generate reviews that you can use for further marketing efforts.
Many people aren’t ready to come back to the website and look for a place to leave a review even if they love the product. By inserting interactive features into a follow-up email, you can make it much easier to leave a review.
Tips for Creating Interactive Emails
When you add interactive emails to your marketing campaign, you need to maximize their effect. Here are a few tips that can help you get the most out of each interactive email message.
1. Make Your Emails Accessible
Similar to any other email campaign, you need to segment your audience in order to provide the right interactive content to the right people. Keep in mind that interactive elements may not be the best options for people with certain disabilities.
That’s why you need to make sure that all interactive elements are backed with text. This can ensure accessibility for all types of audiences.
2. Study Your Audience
It’s important to study your audience to figure out whether they will appreciate interactive elements in their emails. Some people are likely to play a game while others may view it as inappropriate. You can always segment the audience according to their needs and preference.
3. Watch the Size
The size of your email is an important factor that contributes to open rates. If you add large-size videos or images to the email body, the email service provider may view your message as spam.
That’s why it’s important to compress emails as much as possible. However, you need to make sure that it doesn’t affect the quality of interactive elements.
4. Test the Email
Before sending your first interactive email message to your audience, test it by sending yourself an email.
- Make sure all elements look fine on both mobile and desktop devices.
- Check the quality of videos and images.
If you are sending polls or surveys, you need to make sure that all questions are clear, and that the consumer receives a “thank you” note once they are done.
Before sending the message to the audience, take advantage of email verification tools to make sure you aren’t sending emails to invalid addresses.
Start Taking Advantage of Interactive Emails Today
Interactive emails can transform your entire email marketing campaign by increasing your conversion rates. Consumers enjoy interactive elements since they make email messages fun to read.
Interactive emails may require a sizable investment, especially if you want to design gamification elements. However, they usually have an impressive ROI.
