All you need to know about Interactive Email capabilities in Salesforce Marketing Cloud

From Plain Text to HTML to Personalized to dynamic to now Interactive, email marketing has come a long way. According to Emma, Email is the biggest source of ROI for 59% of marketers. But, starting with brainstorming ideas for your email campaign in SFMC to creating and then shooting the emails to your customers’ inbox takes a huge amount of effort from marketers. 

You don’t want to miss out on customer feedback as it enables you to give them the best experiences. However, customers are reluctant to provide feedback if you take them out of their inbox to a different web page. We know it just takes a few clicks, but remember that your customers are busy people and they may have other priorities. 

Creating interactive emails in Salesforce Marketing Cloud can help you get customer feedback and with much more ease. It is a tool that helps you eliminate challenges and get the much-anticipated customer feedback without compromising on the experiences you are trying to deliver. 

Interactive Email Form Block in SFMC

Salesforce launched interactive emails in 2020 to arm its SFMC users with the best email marketing capabilities. The Email Form Block is the first innovation in interactive emails.

It allows marketers to get the relevant customer information directly from the mails. Thus, it helps to increase customer engagement and gives you more data to improve their experiences.  

Finding and Configuring the Block

You can find the Interactive email form block in Content Builder for Marketing Cloud Pro or higher editions. This block allows you to create, view, and write to a data extension. You can ensure that all users have the data extension by updating the permissions. Also, you can configure the block in the app switcher. Follow the next steps: 

• Hover over your name in SFMC and click Setup
• Search Content Builder Settings
• Enable Email Form Block under permissions

How Does Interactive Email Form Block Help Marketers?

The interactive email form block allows marketers to leverage the interactive email capabilities in SFMC to get: 

• Quick Feedback & Reviews: You can get customer feedback in the email itself. Also, interactive emails allow your customers to submit the post-purchase product reviews within the Thank you email that you send them.
• Progressive Profiles: Customers can quickly fill in their profile information without leaving the inbox.
• Easy Signups: Wouldn’t it be much easier for you to get signups on your webinar if the recipient could do it by just clicking once in the email? Well, now they can! Customers can easily sign up for your upcoming events or newsletter with one click in the email.
• Case Forms: This allows your subscribers to create or update a support case.
• Lead Forms: This helps you to capture or update subscriber information from your leads.
• Empty Form: You can also choose to start from scratch and create any kind of form that you want.

Thus, interactive emails in SFMC allow you to put your best foot forward by helping you provide the best customer experiences. Here’s a comprehensive guide to using interactive email forms in SFMC, in case you want to explore more. 

Take a look at how HP is doing the best with the interactive email of SFMC. 

Interactive Emails With AMP 

Salesforce, in its Marketing cloud release earlier this year, announced support for AMP for Email. It is a tool that allows you to create dynamic, interactive emails. 

You can make your email campaigns interactive with the help of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), an open-source language created by Google. This innovation helps and eases down the process of customer interaction directly in the inbox, which means your customers wouldn’t have to go to an external web page to fill out a survey, feedback, or sign up! 

How does AMP for Emails help? 

AMP helps you create highly personalized email marketing campaigns directly from SFMC. The AMP version of a message is embedded in the mail itself as a new MIME part. This acts as an add-on to the already existing HTML and plain text emails to make sure that your email works across all email clients. 

Furthermore, an AMP email betters your interaction with your customers as it helps you to update the emails with real-time content whenever a recipient opens them. 

For instance, one email will take care of an order shipment which would automatically update with the real-time developments. Thus, you would not have to send your customers multiple emails, and they would not feel bombarded as well. 

Let’s explore some other reasons why AMP is good to build interactions with your customers.

#1 Better Engage with Customers

You can use carousels in emails to show multiple pieces of content in a given area while allowing your customers to click, swipe, or tap through the product or images and thus improve engagement.

#2 Easily Collect Customer Insights

Email forms with AMP help you collect customer insights. You can collect information from your customers such as feedback, product reviews, surveys, profile data, and sales leads with the help of embedded forms in a message. 

#3 Two-way Interaction 

AMP for email appointments helps you get two-way interaction capabilities with your customers; real-time and in-email interactions. In this, a customer can book an appointment without having to leave their inbox. 

Using AMP Emails in SFMC

You can use the Content Builder of SFMC to create, preview, and save AMP emails. Also, you can use any existing send options in the marketing cloud to send AMP emails. Gmail, Yahoo, and Mail.Ru mail clients support AMP emails; AMP emails expire in 30 days, which is why some clients don’t support them. Besides, AMP emails require an HTML fallback. AMP email access can be disabled from Content Builder Admin in case you no longer desire to use it. 

Want to know more about AMP in Email? This article can help. 

Wrap Up

Interactive emails in SFMC not only help you get customer feedback but also allow you to focus on channeling your efforts to give them the best experiences. We hope that you now have a better knowledge of the interactive email capabilities in SFMC and know how to make the most out of an interactive email form in SFMC for your next campaign. 

If you need assistance with interactive email or want to get started with AMP emails in SFMC, you can reach out to us or you can even hire our dedicated SFMC specialist.