It’s been nearly 50 years since email was introduced to the world and there’s no denying that it’s arguably one of the most popular forms of digital communication out there. Email is used profusely in a business environment for communicative purposes and is a powerful marketing tool designed for reaching a wide audience. With 47% of marketers rating email marketing as the most effective channel for B2B use, it is definitely a crucial element to your digital marketing strategy.
Regardless of the above, emails can be overlooked by a company’s audience. With lots of spam and junk being pumped out there by scammers or genuine advertisements coming into a consumer’s inbox, standing out can feel like a real challenge. This is where interactive emails come in!
Interactive emails use techniques that offer functionality that is normally expected from a webpage or a digital asset, allowing users to actively engage with the content, resulting in a better customer experience and an increase of click-through rates.
Examples of interactive email techniques include:
- Changing button rollovers or hover effects on links to change their colour or size. This is basic interactivity within emails but is nonetheless a way to break the static nature of plain-text email format.
- Trigger image swaps on hover actions to reveal associated hidden content. This reintroduces an element of surprise or discovery; the email designer can get as creative with this as they like, creating a sense of excitement and customising the experience to best fit the brand.
- One of the most impressive things a sender can do is include form elements. Traditionally, a user could not input any data unless they were taken off the email and onto a web page. With this interactive capability, the email can have forms or surveys embedded to be able to quickly collect data there and then. Users are more likely to do this than be redirected because it is a much quicker and streamlined process.
- Embedding video into email is becoming increasingly more popular in the realm of interactive email. Instead of linking off to an external video, users can play a video file there and then. This could be anything from a webinar tape, a clip of a business conference or a screen recording of an infographic.
Despite all of these exciting possibilities, interactive emails should be used with careful consideration of the target audience. For example, audiences with whom you wish to just exchange direct information such as meeting times, file attachments or contact details won’t benefit from these techniques as they require a direct approach rather than additional reasons to engage with your email. Interactive emails should be reserved for people who need to be ‘hooked’ or intrigued – there should be an element of surprise. You also need to know your audience and offer fallbacks for functionality that is not always offered to other email clients. Interactive emails are best utilised to build interest, encourage engagement and make yourself stand out from the crowd.
Author: Marcela Bohorquez, Senior Developer
If you’d like to learn more about how to optimise your emails, or are interested in getting help from our experts, please get in touch at hello@onebite.co.uk
