Is Google AMP Worth It for Your Email Marketing?

Six years ago, Google introduced the accelerated mobile pages (AMP) primarily to improve the loading speed of mobile websites and enhance the subscriber’s experience.

The initial success of AMP led to an update that makes fast-loading and interactive emails that emulate mailable microsites possible.

Using this technology, your subscribers can interact with an email without visiting the website or landing page. AMP emails make it possible to fill a form, respond to a survey, or check out to complete a purchase from the email itself.

AMP email not only helps create a better subscriber experience but brings more conversions and faster business growth. It requires some coding work. It’s most useful when most of your email subscribers are under the Gmail umbrella.

While worthwhile uses of AMP in email exist, others must take it slowly and employ a phased rollout. A technique-sensitive technology, it is a good idea to segment your subscribers and send to Gmail addressees at the outset.

And one more caveat: You need a different metric to evaluate success as AMP emails don’t track click-through rates.

Now, let’s look at how you could use AMP technology in your brand’s emails.

Bookings

Your subscribers can check the availability and book a ticket from the email itself. You can let the users browse through the deals and complete the booking without redirecting them to the website landing page or mobile app.

See how Booking.com has implemented this technology in its promotional email:

Booking.com also lets recipients manage their subscriptions in this email. That’s another great idea to incorporate AMP in your emails.

Shopping

Through this email from Nest, the subscriber can add the products to their cart and check out without ever going to their site:

If your subscribers don’t execute the buy, you can use AMP to create an email about their cart abandonment and help them complete the purchase faster.

(Note: Nest executes email using AMP-like functionality but not through AMP source coding.)

Mini apps

With the help of AMP technology, companies can send an email simulating their mobile app.

In this example from Pinterest, the user can save the pin and view the original image without opening the app or website:

Another awesome application of AMP in email would be dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, or OkCupid. Users could swipe through the profiles in the email itself, literally opening up new speed dating opportunities.

Lengthy emails

Your newsletter may be loaded with content – too much content for the subscriber to want to scroll all the way down.

In such cases, send an AMP email with an accordion.  Look at this example from my company, Email Uplers. Besides a slider, subscription form, and contact form, we used an accordion to convey more in the limited space.

Invitations, polls, and quizzes

Your subscribers can RSVP directly in invitation emails with the help of AMP functionality. The ease should engage subscribers more quickly to register for the event. Although this looks like a promising application, many marketers still prefer the good old way of getting registrations through the landing page rather than the email itself.

You also can invite your audience to participate in polls and quizzes on social media. You must have expressed your opinion on several polls on social media platforms, right? AMP has extended this functionality to emails.

AWeber sent a poll with the help of AMP email to see if marketers would send Black Friday or Cyber Monday email campaigns.

The same technique can be used to send a quiz, as shown in this example:

If the subscriber reopens the email, the updated answer percentages appear.

If AMP isn’t activated in the subscriber’s inbox, they can be redirected to a landing page, though they won’t seek the dynamic results breakdown.

Caveat: Only use this functionality for recipients familiar with this type of technology and understand that it’s trustworthy content.

Calculators and tracking

AMP allows the inclusion of calculators in emails. Banking and finance industry marketers, for example, can include monthly income (EMI) calculators. Recipients input the loan amount and duration to see the EMI.

AMP also can be used to track the status of the recipient’s parcel.

A few tech things

The email tech person on your team certainly can help with creating the perfect AMP email. To send out an AMP email, you must:

• Create an AMP email with a dynamic MIME part. Double-check it with the AMP validator and testing tool.
• Make sure to follow the security requirements set by Gmail and Gmail Bulk Sender Guidelines.
• Send it from the production servers or a server with the same DKIM/SPF/From:/Return-Path: headers to [email protected].
• After sending the email, fill Google’s registration form. It looks something like this:

Final reminder

Because of the coding intricacies involved in AMP and its time-consuming execution, people are hesitant to employ it in their business. If you invest in the coding intricacies and time-consuming execution for AMP emails, make sure you have tested it for flawless rendering. Also, if most of your subscribers aren’t using Gmail, you should have a suitable fallback email format.

Have you sent AMP emails to your subscribers or are you planning to do so? Let us know in the comments.

 Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute