It comes as no surprise to anyone that the last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of marketing emails sent daily.
But here’s 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 received and sent 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 floating about is the 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 has only begun to increase 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 an interactive email newsletters experience 73% higher open rates compared to conventional email marketing, with many of today’s hottest design trends incorporating interactive features to boost engagement between the message and its recipient.
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 FiO’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 simply clicking a link, moving the cursor over an image, filling out a form and other similar things.
The whole idea of an interactive email is to promote a fun-filled user experience and to 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? Simple: for the significant boost in reader engagement that 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.
Some of the immediate benefits include:
Higher Click-Through Rate
Since interactive emails create an urge in the reader to participate, they result in greater click-through rates and boost 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 help 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 taste and preferences of the customers through feedback, surveys, tests, and more. This type of data is a crucial tool in understanding what your audience needs andgleaning meaningful data that you can use to deploy future campaigns, strategies, products, and services accordingly when used in conjunction with aInsight Marketing Platform like Group FiO’s.
Using a robust Marketing Platform, you can create interactive emails that:
PersonalizeYour Messages
Customers these days prefer and expect brands to send messages that speak directly to them.However, implementing personalized messages does not just end with using your subscriber’s name in the subject line. In today’s competitive modern eCommerce world, there’s much more to personalization than that.
Interactive elements speak to a client in ways a static image and standard copy fail to do.When you go the extra mile to engage customersby offering them a game, asking them for a live opinion, etc.you not only capture their interest, but you also create a reason for them to keep “tuning in” to what you have to say. By doing this, you get opened, AND you gather incredibly useful data, the definition of “marketing gold” in today’s competitive landscape.
5 Tips on How to Create an Engaging Interactive E-Mail
1. Include Videos
One of the popular methods used to engage customers more efficiently with emails is by embedding videos.For this to work, the first thing you need to ensure is that you have a marketing platform that can support this function.With Group FiO’s Insight Marketing Platform, you’re able to send emails that provide you with countless options to deploy meaningful engagement technology.
You’ll also want to make sure that 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 OptinMonster, 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 are 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.
GIFs increase the visual depth and interest of an email and make your emails highly shareable. According to a recent study, 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 use the “old school” method of having your audience follow a link that takes them away from your email, it’s highly preferable to embed the actual survey into your email. This not only shows off your technical acumen, but it also makes your email more enjoyable and motivates your readers to give immediate responses, providing you useful data all while keeping your audience entertained and intrigued.
A poll or survey option that is particularly successful is asking your target audience an opinion on a future product or service you’re considering offering in the future. Not only does your audience feel as if you value their insight and opinion, you garner straight from the source data that can save you serious R & D budget dollars down the road.
4. Include Live Shopping Carts and Detailed eReceipts
How about removing all the roadblocks preventing a customer from making a purchase by giving them a shopping experience built into their email?
By developing an email that gives your customer a “mini-showcase” shopping experience, you convey to your customer that you care about making the shopping experience for them as easy as possible and that you’re a brand that will “come to them” in order to give them a top-notch user experience. Additionally, when your interactive emails originate from a data-driven platform like FiO’s Insight Marketing Platform, you can put together a highly personalized “capsule collection” of items that your customer has interacted with on your site in some way before, which utilizes the best of AI technology to create deeper customer loyalty.
By providing a detailed, comprehensive eReceipt after purchase, you’re effectively extending the customer engagement, providing a service that let’s customers know you are continually finding ways to provide them with 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.
Let’s accept the truth. Although your customers may fit into different age groups, from children to adults, everyone loves to play games. 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 them for 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 as well as a brand that is on the forefront of today’s tech.
Conclusion
Your customers’ inboxes are constantly flooded with offers from rival brands and their emails. With more and more companies fighting for in ox prominence, it’s crucial that your emails stand out by engaging in an interactive and fun-filled way that also provides 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, Group FiO can help. Contact us NOW to find out how a robust, comprehensive platform help you create engaging, interactive emails that drive data TODAY.