Google AMP for Email: Welcome To The Future

Untiltoday email was simply a flyer, a staticpreview of an offer. No longer, or (at least) not only.

In fact, Google has recently announced that it has released AMP technology in Gmail, making emails not only dynamic (animated GIFs and countdowns already contributed to this) but also interactive, browsable, and actionable.

Thisnovelty opens up significant scenariosfor companies, so much so that some companies – such as Booking, Doodle,Ecwid, and Pinterest, just to name a few – have already introduced it in theiremail marketing plans.

Butlet’s start from the beginning. In this post we’ll take a look at:

• What is AMP technology
• How it applies to the email world
• The communication and marketing scenarios it offers companies
• How to make ityour own using MailUp.

Openedup and promoted by Google, AMP standsfor Accelerated Mobile Page. It is awebsite creation language derived from HTML and optimized so that sites canload faster on mobile devices.

Atthe base of AMP’s development was the desire to support the global trend, wheretraffic on mobile devices isconstantly higher than that attributable to the desktop world.

Inmany cases the use of content on mobiles is not yet optimal, suffering fromdifficulties in adapting graphics and slowloading. These limits affect the user’s browsing experience.

Createdwith the aim of improving the loadingspeed of web pages for mobile, AMP pages are in fact programmed with theirown language, a variation of HTML called AMPHTML, a new open format with Apache license whose code is available onGitHub for all those interested in development.

Inshort, AMP is the open source library that lets you create interactive pages that are fluid and load quickly.

Andhere we come to the point: Google veryrecently announced that it has completed the AMP implementation project on itsemail services.

AMP for Email translates into the possibility for recipients to perform actions within the body of an email that go well beyond the simple click redirecting them to a landing page or a website.

Simplifyingits operation, we can say that – based on the recipient’s click – the emailclient sends data to the company website and, as a result, updates the email with new content.

Thisis a huge turning point, especially if we consider that Gmail catalyses a hugeslice (26% of the audience) of the ESP market, thanks to over one and a half billion active users at the endof 2018. Furthermore, Mountain View has already announced that AMP willalso be implemented on Yahoo Mail,Outlook, and Mail.ru.

Withthe new email technology, actions can be carried out directly in the messagebody, for example:

• Confirmation of participationin an event
• Filling out aquestionnaire
• Browsing offers and product catalogs
• Responding to a comment and much more.

Allthis without having to leave the email.

Asanticipated, several companies have already started using these interactiveemails. These include Booking.com, Despegar, Doodle, Ecwid, Freshworks, Nexxt,OYO Rooms, Pinterest, and redBus. Let’s see some use examples of AMP for Gmail.

Pinterest was one of the first companies to experimentwith this technology. In fact, Pinterest’s emails appear just as before, but –once inside – you immediately notice an enormous novelty: they are nowliterally browsable, letting recipients searchfor ideas and inspirations to pin.

Thatwhich the Pinterest user would have done by entering his account, he can now dodirectly within the email. Distancesare indeed canceled, the user experience is simplified, to the full advantageof both actors: the company and the user.

OYO Rooms, on the other hand, lets the recipient browsebetween the various proposals foraccommodation and hotels obtaining details simply by scrolling and clickingin the body of the email:

Notto mention how much the new technology can facilitate all those activitiesrelated to reservations: museums, institutes, or any company promoting events or courses, but also airlines and trains. Every businesswill find the best and most functional creative way to give customers andprospects the opportunity to browse, choose, and book trips, visits, andcourses directly in their inbox, from desktop or mobile.

Thisis similar to what Doodle currentlydoes, as it sends interactive emails with which the recipient can respond toinvitations by selecting the ideal date, without having to access another site.

Thenthink of the potential that AMP can have for the email marketing strategies of e-commerce and retail, two sectors thatcould make their own campaigns for real online browsable stores: showcases thatcan be browsed in depth just a few moments after opening a simple email.

A necessary disclaimer – currently, Gmail AMP isn’t supported by any drag & drop email editors (such as MailUp’s BEE) and its inclusion in HTML-coded messages is far from straightforward.

A good starting point to get your infrastructure ready is to correctly set up your DMARC and align the domain used in the DKIM signature with that used as the sender.

To wrap up: how excited are you at this news? And how would you use interactive emails in your strategy? Let us know in the comments below!