In February 2019, Google announced the launch of AMP for Email spec, a native support for dynamic and interactive emails, powered by AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages).
Google showcased it as an “opportunity to modernize one of the most popular places where people spend their time” as well as “a powerful way for developers to create more engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences” for their customers.
Question is: are you making the most of the AMP framework? Let’s see!
What Is AMP for Email?
AMP is a new markup specification you can add on top of your traditional HTML emails to provide extra functionality in the inbox while leveraging the speed of the accelerated mobile pages framework.
AMP for Email in action: Imagine the email notification you get when someone comments on your Google Doc. With AMP for Email, you can respond to the comment in Gmail without ever leaving your inbox. You can add interactivity directly in the inbox using anything from basic image carousels to ratings, animations, and even dynamically updated content. This is all possible using a new specification AMP markup that looks like HTML.
Five Reasons Why AMP Could Be Any Email Marketer’s Dream
1. Emails can actually be fun
The element of fun and creativity offered by AMP is exciting. Leveraging it can help you create some really innovative emails with interactive quizzes and other features that create meaningful experiences for your subscribers. This can draw subscribers in and establish email value right from the start. It could also provide future targeting and personalization information you can use in your emails.
2. Customization is easier
Using AMP to improve your opt-out or opt-down processes will make it easier for subscribers to exit their subscriptions or adjust their preferences. This will help mitigate subscribers’ complaints.
3. Targeted shopping experiences are within reach
In emails, AMP can facilitate enhanced personalization. This can be done by including personalized relevant products, offers, and information for each customer. For example, geo-targeting can make interactive emails more effective by providing options that immediately resonate with your subscribers, fully targeting their experiences from start to finish.
4. Your curated environment gets better
Content curation inspires engagement. AMP in email will allow you to highly improve your current curation approach by creating a well-merchandised browsing and shopping experience in a curated environment. You can get creative and find different ways to draw subscribers in with new, captivating email experiences.
5. Consumer convenience can finally be possible
This is one of the biggest benefits that come with using AMP in email: instead of redirecting customers to a landing page or a crowded website, you can give them the option to complete an action right within the email. Simple tasks like calendar appointments, tracking, and confirmations are just the tip of the iceberg here, but if you start combining interactivity, product curation, and targeting, you can provide a lot of value. AMP can help subscribers down the purchasing path before the email introduces them into a crowded, often overwhelming website experience.
Potential Drawbacks Associated with AMP for Email
- Little or no support from ESPs: creating interactive emails isn’t as simple as creating HTML emails because AMP requires a third, separate MIME-type: text-x-amphtml. If your email service provider can’t support the technology you need, you may find yourself unable to create interactive emails.
- AMP is exclusive to Gmail: if your email list consists primarily of Gmail users, this won’t be an issue for you. But if this is not the case, you might find yourself in a situation where you need to create a non-AMP version of your email for non-Gmail users.
- Limited email performance tracking: it’s important to know how well your email campaign is performing. However, it’s not clear how marketers will be able to track and report on AMP-powered emails with interactive actions that might prompt you to rethink how email performance is captured and measured.
The promise of AMP is advanced interactivity and functionality. This can be accessible to anyone who is familiar with HTML and can use a relatively simple, lightweight markup language that’s easy to get started with. Using only a few extra lines of code will enable you to include animations, carousels, surveys, polls, lightboxes, feeds, ratings, and a lot more interactive elements in any of your email campaigns. You will have the default HTML and CSS version as a fallback option.
AMP also promises enhanced functionality and increased engagement from subscribers. AMP can be your power tool that helps you make the best of the average 11 seconds most subscribers spend per email.
What do you think? Is it time to get AMPed?
