Revisiting Kinetic Emails in the Endemic Era Marketing Landscape

By Jennifer Choo

KEY TAKEAWAY

Modern consumers crave ease of use and relevant information via hyper-personalization, and marketing teams are looking to deliver just that via kinetic emails. If you haven’t explored leveraging kinetic emails, now is the perfect time.

Marketing has rapidly evolved, focusing more on customer acquisition, customer retention, and loyalty. Modern consumers are calling for anytime, anywhere access to information that is relevant to their needs and user–friendly digital interfaces that are maximized for ease of use. Email remains a popular marketing medium with high engagement levels, and savvy marketers are always looking for additional ways to create inclusive shopping experiences tailored to their customers’ preferences.

To achieve this, marketing teams must level up their email game, innovating the emails of the past to be more interactive, engaging, and full of UX–friendly design elements. This is where kinetic emails come into play.

What Are Kinetic Emails?

Kinetic emails are interactive, user–friendly, website–like content all housed within a singular email. The elements included in kinetic emails can range from search features and menus to shoppable product grids, sliders, gifs, and more,all in the vein of creating an interactive experience that mimics the interactivity of a website without ever having to leave the inbox.

When developed correctly, kinetic emails provide a personalized, all–inclusive brand experience for customers, with products, deals, and information that serve their particular needs and interests. Because kinetic design utilizes CSS3 and HTML5 to enhance interactive elements, it is compatible with many platforms and devices, including Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook 2003, Outlook.com, iPhones, iPads, and some Android devices. Many platforms also integrate fallback techniques to ensure that these emails render properly, especially on email domains that do not support kinetic email content and design.

Mirroring a website experience right in an email allows users to take advantage of multiple interaction points and explore a host of product offerings. This creates the ease of use the modern consumer is looking for. Coupled with data-driven, hyper-personalization strategies, kinetic emails are a surefire way to increase engagement.

Why Are Kinetic Emails So Popular in Endemic Marketing?

The pandemic brought about a major shift in consumer shopping habits, and with it came sharp pivots in marketing strategies. While it’s true that kinetic emails were gaining popularity before the pandemic, the interactive elements, overall user experience, and level of personalization that kinetic emails bring to the table are exactly what modern, endemic-era consumers are looking for from brands.

Additionally, attention spans are now shorter than ever among consumers, so it’s essential to capture interest upon first impression of opening the email. What better way to gain attention than with a highly interactive, animated kinetic email? Consumers want easy access to products and services that are suited to their needs when and where they want them — including right in their email inboxes.

Engaging Visuals

The basis of kinetic emails is providing the rich and engaging visual experience of a website all within the inbox. The coding techniques utilized by kinetic emails enable the creation and rendering of high-impact, interactive elements that are optimized with modern UX best practices.

Optimized Interactivity

Kinetic emails are built on a foundation of interactivity. Leveraging style templates that highlight featured content, animations, dynamic visuals, and search features allow marketing teams to create a website–like experience for customers without ever taking them out of their inbox. This gives consumers the freedom to explore and interact with a brand’s products, services, and information in a simplified and engaging way.

Inclusive Experience

Kinetic emails mimic the inclusive experience of visiting a brand’s website. The inclusion of digital elements and responsive content, i.e., interactive navigation buttons and collapsible menus, shoppable product listings, and search features, are considered rich user interactions. Integrating these elements creates a choose-your–own–adventure–like experience for consumers, enabling a more personalized experience that results in a rewarding brand interaction.

Inspire Curiosity

Curiosity and exploration often foster higher engagement rates when it come to marketing. Integrating interactive and engaging content in emails has been proven to inspire curiosity among recipients. Savvy marketing teams leverage strategies across channels that include interactivity to inspire curiosity-driven engagement, and kinetic emails are leading the way when it comes to the inbox.

Marketing is all about creating excitement and enticing consumers to learn more about your products and services. The rich levels of interactivity that kinetic emails provide give brand marketers a successful way to do just that. Couple that interactivity with the commitment-free way of exploring your products, and you have a strategy that increases engagement, builds trust between your brand and consumers, and ultimately boosts brand loyalty.

Data-Driven Personalization

Personalization is the basis for all impactful email marketing, including kinetic emails. The endemic consumer has no interest in receiving or interacting with marketing content that is not hyper-personalized to their needs. As we enter the era of first and zero-party data, we will see an increased need to build reciprocal relations between brands and consumers.

Leveraging existing consumer data to drive personalization within your email strategy is the best way to capture consumer interest. Utilizing kinetic emails allows marketing teams to take personalization to the next level by providing a bevy of interactive elements that allow consumers to choose their own path when navigating products and information. These emails also feed preference data back to the brand marketing team to further enhance customer data profiles.

Dynamic Elements

As with pretty much all endemic marketing, content plays a critical role in the dynamic elements of emails. Leveraging dynamic content and interactivity is crucial to garnering in-depth user information to tailor marketing messages. Marketing teams leverage the insights from customer interactions to serve up hyper-personalized suggestions for content, services, and product purchases throughout the customer‘s journey. Serving up relevant content in a dynamic way allows marketing teams to better understand consumer affinity towards certain products, services or topics.

After all, who could resist a fully interactive email filled with a selection of products to explore, tailored to their personal preferences?

Combining the interactive and dynamic elements of kinetic emails to gain insights that deepen personalization strategies is the key to boosting engagement and increasing customer lifetime value.

Creating Convenience

Endemic consumers want convenience and marketing teams are leveraging every tactic at their disposal to provide it. Kinetic emails answer consumers’ call for convenience by serving them a bevy of relevant products or services they can explore without ever having to leave their inbox.

By utilizing consumer data to provide insights into customer preferences, interests, and purchase history, marketing teams take the guesswork out of shopping with their brand, thus creating a simplified and more convenient shopping experience. Providing this through kinetic emails, in a way that lets the customer choose their own path and research products in their own way, creates a stronger connection to the brand.

In Short

While kinetic emails have gained popularity over the past few years, the rapid shifts in consumer behavior due to the pandemic have made them a necessary part of the endemic marketing strategy.

Modern consumers are calling for interactive, engaging, and hyper-personalized experiences from brands more than ever before. Marketing teams are leaning into tactics that allow customers to interact with marketing messaging when and where they want, allowing them to make informed purchasing decisions on their own terms. Utilizing kinetic email allows them to do just this in a simple, efficient, and effective way.

Want to empower your business with a future-ready email strategy?

Leveraging kinetic emails and other dynamic marketing strategies is a must for todays marketing teams. Theorem can help you acquire new customers and increase engagement and lifetime value through customized marketing solutions structured around your business needs.

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