INTERACTIVE EMAILS
Brands are betting on introducing interactive elements in email, especially since mobile phones have become the main device from which emails are consulted. We are referring specifically to the use of sliders, tabs and hamburger menus.
SLIDERS . They allow you to display multiple contents in a carousel. These are effective “sliding” elements that capture the user’s attention, as they can highlight outlook email lists multiple products in the different sections of the carousel.
TABS . Tabs in email serve as small internal navigation menus. They allow you to fit a lot of content into your email without getting in the way of the design. Tabbed navigation is also easily recognizable and most users are intuitively familiar with how it works.
MOBILE MENU. Collapsible menus (known as hamburger menus ) help to present a much cleaner design. They serve to hide a menu or content behind a single button. The two most important advantages of the collapsible menu are that it is very recognizable and that the hamburger allows direct access to navigation.
Although it is a trend to make email more interactive, there are limitations that make its implementation difficult . In fact, we estimate that only 40% of users of a standard database have the technology and email provider that support these interactive elements. There are incompatibility problems between the different email clients and, ultimately, these are developments aimed mainly at Apple devices, since the rest have different problems when it comes to interpreting the interactive area or correctly displaying the alternative content.
The most widespread practice to solve this situation is to also create fallback versions of the email that are not “interactive” so that we can guarantee that all subscribers can view the email.
It is also important to point out the aspect of usability : users are not used to the interactivity of the elements of an email, so many of them will not react as we wish. Before implementing these new techniques, it is very important to analyze the database to estimate how many users will be able to access the interactive content. If we ultimately decide to implement them, we must design a consistent fallback and test the result to ensure that the interactivity is not confusing the user and is negative for their experience.
USER PROFILING
We have seen how, in addition to the user segmentation model based on demographic, behavioural and value data, scoring models are being developed that allow us to “predict” each user’s propensity to act in a certain way when faced with a value proposition. There are scoring systems that indicate which users are more likely to respond positively to a specific type of offer, or to interact with an email on a specific day and time. We have seen two specific examples in product recommendation systems and in optimising the timing of campaign sending.
AUTOMATIONS
More and more brands are integrating the real-time flow of data between the different interaction points of the digital ecosystem. Thus, the real-time capture of data in forms that pass the information to marketing automation systems is significantly impacting the tasks that email marketing managers usually perform. We are seeing how these managers are assuming responsibility for the so-called transactional or trigger emails, and not only that, in addition to tasks linked to the data model, including its capture, quality and its use to segment and personalize.
JOURNEYS
CRM and eCommerce departments are encouraging Email Marketing teams to implement automatic programs based on a user life cycle model (acquisition, loyalty, conversion and recovery). Creating journeys has two major advantages: firstly, we improve the user experience, who receives highly relevant information at the most opportune moments of their relationship with the brand. Secondly, they allow us to “scale” a relationship model with the user that would not be feasible without this type of technology.
