Looking for an easy way to increase your email marketing click-through rate (CTR) and conversion? We examine interactive email marketing and whether or not it's a trend worth following.

What is Interactive Email Marketing?

Email Monks describe interactive email marketing as being a new take on email, "more vibrant and similar to a microsite." Interactive emails generally feature GIFs, video, animated menus, live shopping carts, and more. It's important to note that these enhancements must work on mobile!

Why do Interactive Emails Work?

You’ve probably heard that goldfish are able to focus for longer periods of time than humans, which speaks volumes about the length of your reader’s attention span. Many people openly wonder, “who even reads email anymore?”This is where interactive emails really shine. They're a dynamic solution to the so-called "attention deficit epidemic" while also creating deeper and more enhanced experiences for your readers; an important consideration when every dollar spent on email marketing returns an average of $38.At Hawke Media, we’re big fans of GIFs! According to the Email Institute, Animated GIF emails increase CTR up to 26% and can increase conversion rates by 103%! They're also another way you can create meaningful content that adds value in the form of humor, demonstration, or familiarity.

How to Reap the Benefits in Time for the Holidays

The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and Google is estimating that ecommerce sales will increase by 15.8%! We’ll go through a few easy steps to help you optimize your interactive emails to boost your sales by improving your CTR and conversion rate.

1. Choose a holiday that will influence the messaging for your promotion. Some examples include “Black Friday” & “Cyber Monday”. 
2. Determine what your offers, incentives, and time-of-sends will be. (We recommend creating a Google Doc for each major holiday campaign.) For holiday season promos, you're going to want to increase your sending volume to ensure your list doesn't miss out on any awesome offers! 
3. Next, choose what kind of interactive element you want in your campaign. If you’re going to insert a GIF, we recommend this fantastic resource from our friends at Litmus. 
4. Check the fallback version of your GIF. (The email providers that do not support GIFs will only display the first still image of the GIF.) 
5. Q/A over and over again on multiple email clients to ensure that deliverability and user experience doesn't diminish. 
6. Schedule your campaign and let it rip!