10 Content Formats to Make Your Emails More Interactive

Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies to implement across the sales funnel. But with every company trying to use email marketing to reach prospects, internet users are experiencing high email overload.

Email overload happens when your customers start receiving several marketing emails from multiple companies every day. When this happens, they’ll start ignoring most emails that come across as a marketing pitch, consequently shooting down your email opens.

They’ll only have eyes for emails they know will be valuable to them. Consistent value is what improves open rates and lead conversions for companies.

Here are 10 types of content to include in your emails to make them interactive and resourceful.

1. Add video content

Adding a video to your email is one of the best ways to make your emails more interactive. Digital media is a booming industry, and videos play a crucial role in improving engagement.

Video content also attracts more traffic to a website. Close to 65% of email recipients are likely to buy your products and services if they watch a product video. Video is one of the best email formats for B2B email outreach. Also, 79% of customers prefer watching a product video instead of reading plain text.

You can also include a video in your email by uploading it in the mp4 format. Once the recipient gets the email, they can simply play the video in the inbox.

Tools like Liveclicker and Viwomail.com enable you to embed codes in your emails and provide your recipients with a real-time video experience.

When including videos on your emails, ensure it is short and sweet. Long videos make emails boring and reduce the chances of conversion.

For longer videos, add a hyperlink that takes customers to your website or YouTube channel where they watch the whole video and be sure to add a CTA at the end (e.g., subscribe to your new program, buy products, etc.).

Here is an example of a brand that uses video in emails. The company uses an interesting image to persuade the recipients to click on the play button and watch the video.

2. Include a poll or survey

Polls and surveys are great for email engagement. Besides, including polls and surveys in your email campaign helps you collect valuable information from your customers.

Marketers will occasionally include a survey or a poll in the email for customers to fill and add another link that redirects the recipient to their website.

Though it is effective, not many customers will go through the hassle of visiting a different site to fill the survey so try embedding the survey or poll within the email to get more respondents.

Half Moon’s email blast is a typical example of this. The company asks customers to participate in an online survey so they can personalize their offerings and improve customer experience.

3. Use Interactive Images

Instead of using the same old static images, spice up your emails with interactive images that provide more information to users.

Interactive images offer a very rewarding customer experience since they use animations and pop-up videos (usually triggered by clicking on them) to provide more information to customers on the spot. Right in their inbox, in this case.

Moreover, since most people use smartphones to browse and receive emails, interactive images make it very easy to interact with visuals through the mobile screen.  

Soundest Boutique’s email blast encourages recipients to click on the box to reveal a gift, a coupon code in this case, that they can use to get a discount on their next purchase.

4. Use Gamification

Gamification is one of the most useful strategies that marketers use to reach customers. All of us like a good challenge!

Adding a WordPress gamification plugin to your promotional marketing campaign can help increase customer engagement and boost conversions on your e-commerce store.

Here is an example of a gamified email from Email Monks. Recipients can play the game right from within the email. Email Monks isn’t trying to sell anything to the customer here. It’s just offering a fun way to kill boredom which easily makes them a customer favorite.

And if you want to keep it simple, just host the game on your website and add a call to action button that redirects users to it.

5. Send Kinetic Emails

A kinetic email combines CSS and HTML features to make the email content more engaging to the reader. With kinetic emails, recipients can interact with the whole email body to get the best possible experience.

Take an example of the B&Q email. The company creates kinetic emails to engage and lead users to the right actions. The company has used the “Tap to interact" callout to make the email content more appealing and easy to display.

The recipient can just click and continue interacting with the B&Q website. By using kinetic emails, B&Q was able to add 42,000 more click-throughs and increase its responder rate by 32%.

6. Use Accordions

If you plan to include a lot of content in your email, use an accordion to toggle between showing and hiding large data.

This concept helps you save space on your email body and prevents you from overwhelming recipients. It also increases the white space in your email, which, in turn, improves email readability and comprehension.

A user can click on a line or item on the email, and it will contract or expand to show more information. In this way, you’re also able to learn more about your customers’ preferences by tracking where they click on the accordion menu.

To use accordions, find an embedded online code that fits your email editor. Tools like Stripo provide a template where you can replace the links and change the tabs’ names to make the interactive email design completely yours.

American fashion designer, Philip Lim's brand uses accordion in their emails to offer their complete collection that features women’s apparel, shoes & handbags, men, and sale items.

7. Use Countdown Timers

Instead of resorting to cliche text that reads “hurry while stocks last”, add a countdown timer to your emails to create the fear of missing out.

Animated countdowns immediately instill an urgency to act and spend money and hence are great for conversions.

Here is an example of a countdown timer from Body Candy. This strategically designed email makes a great effort to pull in readers and send them to the website.

8. Add Social Media Sharing Icons

Millions of customers use social media every day, and hence are great platforms to interact with your target audience.

Therefore, when creating content for your email, add Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter favicons to encourage them to follow you on social media. Request recipients to share your email content on social networks if they like it.

Here is an example of an email containing all the social icons for easy interaction.

There is a high possibility that if the customer likes your email, they will click on the social media button (attached to the email) and share your offers on their social media profiles apart from following your brand.  

Note that some email clients do not support animated images or interactive tools. So, you can use a static image on the email to replace the animated ones. Use CSS and HTML properties to make the social media icons on the email more appealing.

9. Experiment with memes

Memes can seem a little intimidating at first but considering how they’ve taken over the entire internet, now is the right time to test them out in your marketing campaigns.

Memes contain humorous images often with brief captions. Their entertaining and relatable nature means that they instantly strike a chord with the reader. Which makes them perfect for email marketing.

Here is an example of a meme email in action.

10. Use Slider Images

Slider images pique viewer curiosity and make them wonder what the other visuals have in store for them. Moreover, they offer a compact and convenient way of browsing through visual content.

You can showcase a variety of products on each slide, share customer reviews and testimonials, and show company progress or your success stories.

Slider images also give you a platform to include a call-to-action on the email body. For instance, you can ask the reader to book an appointment for your services, or simply visit your online store.

Here is an example of a slider in action:

Conclusion

The choice of interactive email design that you use will depend solely on your customers’ choices and preferences.

While at least 70% of email providers support interactive emails, you want to ensure that the technique you are using offers the best experience to your recipients.

Always ensure your emails are simple, informative, and engaging because that is what defines email interactivity.

The eleven ways to create interactive emails that I have shared in this article should help you start a successful interactive email marketing campaign. Watch your business grow its customer base and achieve an excellent online reputation. Happy Email Marketing!