Up your open rate with kinetic email

As much as we rail against “Always On” culture, most of us are still pretty tethered to mobile, particularly our emails. It fact, it’s a pretty open secret that checking our phones for messages is the last thing we do at night and one of the first things we do in the morning. According to Deloitte, half of 18-24 year olds check their phone at night, and nearly 86% of us check it within an hour of waking up each morning.

And while that might not be great for our REM cycles or work/life balance, the idea that consumers are checking their email on mobile multiple times a day from different locations: home, their commute, the office, and after hours means that email marketers have the chance to tailor their message not just to their audience, but also to the location and time of day their emails are getting read.

Users expect email to go the extra mile

Guess how many emails are in your inbox. Now guess higher. According to Pando, the inbox has become a modern “junk drawer” where most of us are storing promotions, coupons, and all manner of offers that we might one day use but will probably just let languish. The average inbox contains about 8,000 messages.  

Increasingly, that jam-packed inbox is being accessed via mobile, since mobile devices account for around 30% of all media use. Ignoring the way your email messaging is displayed on mobile can lead to a fate worse than getting lost among thousands of messages–it can actually get your email deleted sight unseen because emails that load incorrectly on mobile are often deleted in as little as three seconds.

In 2018, kinetic email is key

Mobile email should not just be the same old messaging tailored to a smarter screen. We use our smartphones entirely differently from the way we use desktop. It’s time we saw mobile email as a valuable gateway for a vast number of critical touchpoints in the buyer journey. Getting users engaged with emails that load quickly and offer all the features of a full-blown website delivered to the inbox is the best way to avoid the dreaded deletion and rise above a crowd of thousands of offers.

In 2018, it’s time to embrace concept of kinetic email, which offers key features that not only get users engaging but also provide real, standout value. Here are a few ways kinetic email can change the way we think about email.

Smart content blocks: These blocks offer user-specific content, changing based on user location and time of day. Smart content blocks factor in the customers’ entire history and provide customer-centric offers based on purchase history, location, and even time of day.

Interactive elements in emails: Getting users tapping, clicking, and swiping to learn more without ever leaving their inbox is a great way to make sure customers are really understanding your message.

Write in-email reviews: User reviews are an important part of the buyer journey, especially for mobile. Make sure your customers can share their feedback without leaving their inbox.  

Shop from the inbox: Why beat around the bush, or worse, gamble on the customer walking away? Take them straight to check-out to pull in direct conversions from email.

Brands like Intercontinental Hotels are making sure their email is kinetic

Intercontinental Hotels Group was recently looking to step up its email game, so the brand partnered with Selligent Marketing Cloud to improve efficiency, conversions, and time to market. Together, the teams built a kinetic email solution that populated the hotel chain’s reservation confirmation with individual customer offers immediately following a booking.

The result? The highly customized content relied on 31,680 versions and 7,000 URLs that automatically generated and delivered one-to-one offers in less than two seconds, meaning an 81% reduction in time spent creating emails for the brand along with a 75% reduction in external staffing requirements.

Customers want to feel seen

According to a recent study by Selligent, 74%  of consumers expect companies to “treat me as an individual, not as a member of some segment like ‘millennials’ or ‘suburban mothers’.” However, as users become more and more accustomed to highly personalized offers, the challenge only grows. Offering highly engaging, kinetic emails that change to suit the demands of busy customers often sneaking a look at their email between meetings or even before bed is the only way to make messaging stand out against the backdrop of a full to bursting inbox.

If you want to learn more about mobile optimization don’t miss Selligent Marketing Cloud’s ebook ‘Mobile Marketing Essentials: How to Strike the Right Balance for Strategic Mobile Optimization.’