How to create interactive emails and stand out in the inbox • Tecnoblog

When sending an email, your brand will be competing for space in the inbox with countless other companies. Therefore, it is essential that your communication stands out among so much information.

And how to do this? A very interesting strategy is to use interactive emails. They are more interesting and fun for users, and have the advantage of not requiring the recipient to leave their inbox to access a web page.

This tool is proven to be effective for businesses, increasing brand awareness, boosting user engagement and winning back old customers.

What are interactive emails?

Interactive emails are those that contain elements with actions that the user can perform without having to leave the message. There are several items that can be used for this purpose, such as:

• Star ratings
• Built-in searches
• Questionnaires
• Games
• Anchor links

Why use interactive emails?

This strategy is a great way to increase conversion rates, raise brand awareness, simplify data collection, and receive feedback from recipients.

The tactic is successful – and the statistics prove it:

• 75% increase in click-to-open rate
• 300% increase in click-to-open rate when videos are embedded
• 60% of recipients are more likely to interact
• 91% of recipients would like to receive more interactive emails

Despite this, interactive emails are still little known and used, which makes them a great opportunity for your business to differentiate itself.

• Less than 20% of brands offer experiences of this type
• 26.5% of email marketers plan to offer interactive content
• 26% of email marketers occasionally use CSS-based interactivity

Let’s understand in detail why this tool has so much potential.

Increases conversion rate

Using interactive emails makes life easier for recipients, who can perform actions without having to leave their inbox, such as responding to surveys, adding products to the cart or scheduling appointments. This increases the chances of your potential customers becoming loyal customers, increasing the overall conversion rate.

Boosts brand recognition

More and more emails are being sent, and every message competes for space and attention with a multitude of competitors. Delivering a unique experience is a way to differentiate yourself. This way, your recipients start to recognize your brand and identify the quality of the content, and can even forward the emails to friends and bring more potential customers to your business.

Simplifies data collection

With interactive elements in the message, recipients send their feedback faster. With this, your company now has real-time insights, which can accelerate the use of data in future campaigns, making the process much more effective.

Improves user feedback

An interactive email reduces friction when responding to surveys and questionnaires. Without having to leave the inbox, users can share their impressions and experiences more quickly and easily.

How to use interactivity in your company?

Now that you know the full potential of interactive emails, it’s time to talk about how we can use them. In addition to the possible formats, you need to know the best time to use each type of message and maximize conversion gains, brand recognition and data collection.

Getting feedback

There are a few ways to explore interactive messaging to find out what your subscribers, customers or buyers think about what you offer.

Through questionnaires and forms, the customer can say whether they liked their last purchase, how the registration process went and how satisfied they are with the services contracted.

However, your brand is certainly not the only one trying to establish this channel with the consumer. How to differentiate yourself? The answer lies in interactivity: customers feel motivated and comfortable when they can give their opinion without having to leave the email. Furthermore, this type of message catches the recipient’s attention, making the feedback process more inviting.

What to use? There are some possible formats:

• Surveys. Multiple choice questions are quick and easy to answer. This way, your company gets almost instantaneous information about products, events and processes.
• Forms. Quantitative research is not everything; Sometimes, you need to hear what the customer has to say in order to assess how their business is perceived.
• NPS measurement. NPS is the acronym for “net promoter score”, a score that shows the level of satisfaction of your audience and evaluates customer loyalty. It is an extremely simple survey, and the recipient only has to estimate their experience on a given scale.

And when to use it? Each interaction can be leveraged at a moment in the customer journey.

• After a purchase
• After testing a new feature
• After registering on a platform
• Occasionally to check overall customer satisfaction

Offering games

Games are a great way to entertain, attract attention and get engagement. This works even more effectively when there’s a chance to win a discount, a gift card, or a prominent place among users, like on a leaderboard.

Email games can provide even more possibilities to bring consumers closer to your brand, bringing back inactive users or teaching customers how to use everything your service offers.

What to use? There are several game formats that can be present in an email, such as:

• Questionnaires. They can be a tool for different situations. A short quiz can help subscribers remember all the information your product offers. A longer questionnaire may be linked to a good discount, as a way of encouraging interaction.
• Challenges. Longer, more engaging activities can bring back inactive customers and increase engagement with your brand. Among the possibilities are crosswords, memory games, seven errors games and much more.
• Lucky roulette. This game can be linked to the possibility of winning a big discount or benefit, as a way of differentiating your brand from so many others in the customer’s inbox. It’s also a useful strategy when your company doesn’t have enough budget to give generous promotions to everyone: place attractive perks among more modest ones. Free samples, discounts, gift cards or free shipping are some of the options.
• Offer reveals. Interactive emails allow you to provoke curiosity in recipients. You can, for example, send a “scratch card” so the customer can see the offer only after engaging with the message.

And when to use it? Again, different interaction possibilities are better suited to different situations.

• Use quizzes to offer educational content or show how to use your products and services.
• Use challenges to increase engagement, show news and bring back inactive consumers.
• Use lucky spinners and offer reveals to promote your brand, increase sales and also bring back old customers.

Finally, it is also worth keeping in mind some good practices for games in email: have clear goals, propose challenging but achievable activities, use rewards to motivate engagement and offer different forms of recognition.

Furthermore, it is important to offer an option to skip these games – your recipient may not always be willing to participate, so it is best not to force them to do an activity against their will.

How to create interactive emails?

Stripo has an Interactive Module Generator. With it, marketers can easily and quickly create this type of content. Editing is simple and has an intuitive interface, allowing you to create interactions tailored to your brand.

The Interactive Module Generator is part of the Stripo ecosystem, but its use does not require an account. So you can access an easy-to-use tool and solve complex mechanics in just a few minutes.

What is Stripo?

Stripo is an email template creation platform. It is designed to streamline the design process through its intuitive and flexible interface packed with powerful features.

The service has more than 1,600 ready-to-use HTML templates. This allows users to have a good starting point when developing their messages.

You can also start from scratch quickly, thanks to easy-to-use design tools like a block editor that lets you drag and drop elements onto the canvas. Stripo also offers artificial intelligence features to save time and achieve the desired result through prompts.

When it comes to sending, Stripo delivers a complete solution, with integration with more than 90 email service providers (ESP) and email clients. The platform has tools such as AMP support and compatibility with Zapier and n8n, among other services.