Should You Be Looking at AMP Technology to Enhance Your Email Campaigns?

  • Posted: 20th January 2022
  • Written by:

    Ben Wood and Colin McEvily

What is AMP?

Accelerated Mobile Pages or “AMP” is an interesting way for marketers to create a more interactive user experience for their customers and is a step up from standardized HTML emails. In a nutshell, it allows for emails to have more robust capabilities such as including dynamic, real-time and interactivity personalized for the customer. For example, within the email itself, a customer can be presented with real-time promotional offers based on online interactivity with your brand, and then the recipient can RSVP to an event, submit feedback of a recent experience, as well as a whole host of other capabilities. The end-user can do all these things and more, directly within the email itself rather than navigating to a landing page, which could disrupt the experience and lead to abandonment or fallout due to limited customer bandwidth or a multistep process. Using AMP technology within the setup of a marketing email, could render a multi-touch or drip campaign process useless.

AMP in Practice

There are a variety of use cases AMP can accommodate, agnostic of industry vertical. For example, think for a moment that you are in the market to buy a new car. With AMP, a prospective customer could receive an email from the seller with cars that might be of interest based on browsing behavior. While this element isn’t exactly groundbreaking, add this extra component: the prospective customer could then use a filter directly in the email to narrow the results to meet their requirements. Interested in one or a number of the new cars presented in the email? Simply “like” or “favorite” those of interest, which will create a more personalized experience and help expedite the conversion of this prospect into a customer.

Not a B2C company? Let’s say that you’re a software provider looking to increase conversion rates and push out more personalized, dynamic content. By using AMP, you could send your regular newsletter that includes content targeted to users who have navigated to similar pages on your website. The email could allow for users to type in exactly what sort of product element is of interest and have a list of related content automatically populated for them within the email. Once the user finds what they’re looking for, you could have an interactive model that allows the user to search and select a date and time for a direct call with your company’s call center or personal representative. Alternatively, AMP would let you present a form in the email that can be filled out and actioned upon by something such as a product or service demo.

These are only two examples of how AMP can be used in everyday practice. The takeaway is that if your company would like to have these or similar capabilities in place directly within email communications, AMP could be a fit for you. However, AMP is not a one-size-fits-all, and it is important that you asses exactly how it could be of benefit and whether or not it makes sense to implement.

Would AMP Benefit Me?

AMP might be the latest and greatest in email evolution, but you should still practice due diligence before implementing this for your business. This means evaluating what KPIs you want to see met or exceeded by utilizing this functionality as well as developing a clear plan with timelines in how AMP will be rolled out with safeguards in place.

It is also important to adhere to brand guidelines and acknowledge customer experience. You likely do not want to flip the switch and have emails change from a simple, static design to a fully dynamic and web-functioning design as it could confuse or disrupt the overall brand experience for customers. As with most implementations, it is best to follow the Crawl-Walk-Run approach. Following this practice for AMP, you could use iterative approaches such as utilizing the carousel feature as a first step. From here, evaluate how these emails are being received by customers and use this analysis to implement the next phase of the AMP rollout.

Additionally, you should understand the limitations or constraints of using AMP such as whether or not a majority of your customers utilize email clients that can support the technology. Development costs for AMP emails are also higher and take more time to develop than standard HTML email creative, so you want to ensure you have budget to support this. On top of this, you will need someone with the skill set to facilitate the development. Lastly, and potentially most vital, is whether or not AMP will add value. If your company does not employ campaigns that utilize dynamic content or there is not a willingness to explore this capability, it is unlikely to be a match.

These are only a few guiding principles to review when approaching AMP. Celerity has successfully helped clients determine if AMP is the right fit, and we have also implemented AMP in client engagements. Please feel free to reach out and contact us if you would like further information as you explore the possibilities of employing AMP capabilities!

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