Affluent consumers leveraging digital
By Danny Parisi for Mobile Marketer
While standard email campaigns have become stale, kinetic email marketing optimized for mobile devices and with interactive elements can enhance click rates by almost 20 percent, according to a new report from Experian.
The report looked at the difference between static emails and more kinetic, interactive email marketing to gauge how much more effective the latter is than the former. The data found that kinetic emails performed significantly better than static in terms click rates and engagements from consumers.
"Kinetic email opens up a new approach to how we interact with our mobile inbox, and it is starting to show some real results," said Yara Lutz, senior vice president of client success for Experian Cross-Channel Marketing. "It’s best to roll out simple techniques to start, in order to introduce the experience and continue to build upon it throughout your program."
Kinetic email
In the modern age, even as consumers are becoming more and more reliant on mobile devices and remaining connected to their digital lives at all times, email marketing has slowly fallen by the wayside compared to social media advertising and native advertising.
Where once email marketing served as one of the best ways to connect with customers on a digital level, it now is often overlooked as a marketing opportunity in favor of other strategies.
Part of this has to do with the static nature of emails. Most emails come in plain text or HTML format, with occasional images and links.
But this is not the only way email marketing has to be. Many brands should be more aware of the possibilities of kinetic email, or email that is more dynamic and interactive.
An example of kinetic email
Some brands have already taken advantage of this strategy, adding interactive elements that play best on mobile devices and mimic app-like behavior.
Experian took a look at the data behind kinetic email to get a better handle on how much it affects customer engagement.
The data unsurprisingly showed that kinetic email had significantly better returns on engagement than static email.
Kinetic emails had an 18 percent higher click rate and a 10 percent higher open rate than standard email marketing messages.
Additionally, average revenue-per-email increased 8 cents from 6 cents in the previous quarter for brands that began using kinetic emails.
Dynamic and interactive
This strategy of offering kinetic emails with dynamic, interactive content is especially well suited to mobile devices.
While brands have long been able to format emails to look good on mobile, it is only now through kinetic email that they are beginning to take full advantage of what mobile can do for email marketing.
This is important given that 56 percent of total email opens in Q4 of 2016 were on mobile devices.
Some of the brands who have taken full advantage of the powers of kinetic email include Sephora, which used a dynamic email quiz, optimized for use on mobile devices, to recommend products to its customers (see story).
Elsewhere, Vivino saw an increase in app opens thanks to an AI-based email campaign that automatically generated dynamic newsletters (see story).
Vivino saw app opens rise after a kinetic email campaign
These campaigns show the data Experian mined in practice, exemplifying how dynamic and interactive emails optimized for the mobile device can have a positive impact on email marketing.
"Email has been going through an evolution for several years now, as mobile has become a dominant force within the space," Ms. Lutz said. "We’ve already seen a shift in how marketers approach all types of campaigns and cater to the possibilities that mobile can provide.
"What started with designers optimizing campaigns to be responsive and updating content to be geared toward the mobile open, has advanced into new opportunities where users can interact with their emails mimicking an in-app experience. As devices become smarter, we can only expect the same with email as we tag along for the ride."