It comes as no surprise that the last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of marketing emails sent daily. But here are some statistics that will really put that growth in perspective: with the internet becoming increasingly accessible even in the farthest corners of the world, roughly more than 300 billion emails are sent and received each day in 2020. Even more staggering? The number is expected to rise to 376 billion daily emails by 2025.
Today, one of the hottest email design trends is interactive email. With over 3.9 billion email users, interactive marketing emails are a great tool to increase conversion and boost sales. Statistics show that over 35% of businesses send 3 to 5 emails to their customers every week, and the demand for interactive email templates is only increasing due to their popularity.
We live in a world where interactive content is being uploaded to the cloud every minute. But to ensure that people spend their time looking at your messages, you need to insert some interactivity into your email marketing.
Studies done by Forrester revealed that interactive email newsletters experience 73% higher open rates compared to conventional email marketing. Simply adding a useful video to your emails can boost click rates by up to 300%. Imagine how high those figures could reach if you included other interactive elements like gamification!
In short, the better you are at creating a good interactive email, the more revenue you stand to bring in from it. When your email campaigns are designed to empower data gathering and used in conjunction with a data-driven platform like AiinteleKt’s Insight Marketing Platform, you can create a powerhouse email strategy that creates a win-win scenario for both you and your customer audience.
So, What Is an Interactive Email?
An interactive email is simply an email with any form of interactive features. It could be anything that requires the user to engage and participate to gain a broader understanding or experience by clicking a link, moving the cursor over an image, filling out a form, and other similar actions.
The whole idea of an interactive email is to promote a fun-filled user experience and encourage readers to have a positive approach towards content promoted by the sender.
Why Should You Include Interactive Features in Your Emails?
The prime benefit of interactive email campaigns is the significant boost in reader engagement they create. Interactive elements in marketing email campaigns foster curiosity and create excitement that works much better than traditional text and image emails in getting your brand noticed.
This will, in turn, positively affect several factors that contribute to the success of a marketing campaign, such as:
- Higher Click-Through Rate: Interactive emails create an urge in the reader to participate, resulting in greater click-through rates and boosting the number of visitors to the website’s landing page.
- Boost Your Conversion Rate: Interactive emails help to gather a larger number of qualified leads, which further helps to increase the number of conversions and sales.
- Help You Gather More Meaningful Data: Interactive emails can help you gather valuable and insightful data regarding the tastes and preferences of customers through feedback, surveys, tests, and more. This data is crucial in understanding what your audience needs and deploying future campaigns, strategies, products, and services accordingly when used in conjunction with a platform like AiinteleKt’s Insight Marketing Platform.
Using a Robust Marketing Platform to Create Interactive Emails
Interactive emails can:
- Personalize Your Messages: Customers today prefer and expect brands to send messages that speak directly to them. Interactive elements speak to a client in ways static images and standard copy cannot. Engaging customers with a game or asking for a live opinion not only captures their interest but also creates a reason for them to keep “tuning in” to what you have to say. This engagement gathers useful data, the definition of “marketing gold” in today’s competitive landscape.
5 Tips on How to Create an Engaging Interactive Email
1. Include Videos
One popular method to engage customers more efficiently with emails is by embedding videos. Ensure you have a marketing platform that can support this function, like AiinteleKt’s Insight Marketing Platform. Make sure the video file is short and crisp, defaulted to mute, and includes visual elements that support the message delivered by the email. According to a recent study from Optin Monster, 79% of recipients prefer watching a video rather than reading large blocks of copy about a product or service.
2. Add GIFs
Adding GIFs is one of the most fun ways to make your emails both interactive and engaging. The clever use of animated GIFs can help to showcase your product in a better way and engender a feeling of light-hearted camaraderie in your target audience. Emails that include animation like a GIF are 71% more likely to be shared with others than those that are static.
3. Add a Poll or Survey
Adding a survey or poll is an excellent way to learn more about your subscriber’s current demographic information, product and service preferences, and plans for future purchases. Rather than using the “old school” method of having your audience follow a link that takes them away from your email, it’s preferable to embed the actual survey into your email. This approach not only shows off your technical acumen but also makes your email more enjoyable and motivates your readers to give immediate responses, providing you useful data.
A successful poll or survey can ask your target audience’s opinion on a future product or service you’re considering offering. Not only does your audience feel valued, but you also garner straight-from-the-source data that can save you serious R&D budget dollars.
4. Include Live Shopping Carts and Detailed eReceipts
Remove all the roadblocks preventing a customer from making a purchase by giving them a shopping experience built into their email. Developing an email that provides your customer with a “mini-showcase” shopping experience conveys that you care about making the shopping experience as easy as possible. When your interactive emails originate from a data-driven platform like AiinteleKt’s Insight Marketing Platform, you can create a highly personalized “capsule collection” of items that your customer has interacted with on your site, utilizing the best of AI technology to create deeper customer loyalty.
Providing a detailed, comprehensive eReceipt after purchase extends customer engagement, showing that you are continually finding ways to provide value from your brand.
5. Gamify Your Emails
Among all the known tactics to make your emails interactive, gamification is currently the least exploited one. Including a form of gamification is a great use of interactivity that’s sure to catch your audience’s attention. From something as simple as providing a virtual “scratch-off” coupon game to designing a level-up game that rewards continued interaction, there are plenty of ways to make a boring inbox appearance turn into something engaging and fun.
Gamification makes your brand stand out as a customer engagement powerhouse and a brand at the forefront of today’s tech.
Conclusion
Your customers’ inboxes are constantly flooded with offers from rival brands. With more companies fighting for inbox prominence, it’s crucial that your emails stand out by being interactive and fun while also providing you with useful, transactional data.
If your emails are not engaging enough, or you’re not sure how to incorporate some of these tips into your email game, AiinteleKt can help. Contact us NOW to find out how a robust, comprehensive platform can help you create engaging, interactive emails that drive data TODAY
Are you interested in diving deeper into your retail marketing challenges? Schedule a 30-minute chat with one of our specialists. We can review your unique situation and suggest approaches that can set you on the path to success