The Complete Guide to
AMPpowered
Dynamic Emails in Gmail

When Google announced AMP for email was ready for the public, it was definitely a game changer for my clients, which are destination marketing organizations (DMOs). These clients straddle the tourism industry as well as the meetings industry, bringing visitors and meeting planners to their cities.

I feel the ability for AMP to turn our two-dimensional emails into web pages inside our inbox is magical, and the two industries to benefit from it the most would be the aforementioned.

This is exactly what the target audience of my clients’ industries want to do with the content they receive via email—utilize the basic functions of how they interact with the DMO without having to exit an email.

On the tourism side, we could easily start sending emails to visitors with upcoming trips to the destination which include the ability to book hotel rooms through booking engines like Booking.com. Or, use AMP for an email to add in a section for restaurant reservations. It does not look like this can happen now, but I can see very soon be able to sell attraction or concert tickets as well.

For meetings, at this time with Doodle, you have the ability to RSVP for your convention—with the hopes of being able to register in the future!—as well as secure hotel bookings, restaurant reservations, and tickets as mentioned above.

However, a really big one would be the ability to book a flight right from your email. I know there is an #emailgeek that can figure that one out!

AMP for Email will be definitely the next big thing for our email campaigns. At Travian Games, we always keep it up to date with the latest trends, design techniques, and approaches when it comes to email marketing.

The framework, which is now available also for emails, will help us a lot to expand our ideas in terms of interactivity.

We're in the planning & testing phase at the moment, so beyond question, some of our campaigns will take advantage of the AMP framework in the close future - especially when it comes to dynamic content and interactive elements.

All industries (with a large enough subscriber population on supported domains). To me, the most obvious ways to leverage the technology are through things like purchases, reviews, event registrations and survey submissions where you are not forcing the subscriber to leave the inbox to take the action you want them to take.

The simpler the process is for the consumer, the higher completion rates you should see.

This new development in the email marketing world adds a fancy layer of interactivity to subscriber comms .

It's a way for businesses to encourage deeper engagement by offering audiences the ability to explore/penetrate content right from the comfort of their Gmail inbox (and Gmail only, for now).

This reduces friction because they don't need to wait for a browser to open and content to load — it's all instant on the email message itself.

I see B2C eCommerce brands gaining the best results from this strategy at the moment due to the quicker nature of such conversions (perfectly suited to AMP), whereas B2B offerings will need to be more creative to achieve the same bottom line outcome.

AMP will be great for many businesses, but not all will see the immediate benefits due to production costs, support of new MIME types, and the learning curve required for email developers to build these campaigns.

I see a huge opportunity for AMP is in the travel sector. The greatest benefit to them will be the ability to walk subscribers through much of the education, evaluation, and purchase process directly within the email.

Basically, they will be able to move much of the purchase decision into the inbox and have the search results fed back into the message with significantly less friction from the consumer.

Retailers and social sharing sites have already seen some of the benefits of AMP in email, but only time will tell if consumers feel the same way.

I’m still in two minds about AMP. The temptation to use it is real however, as the possibilities for enhancing the customer’s experience are exciting. However, two main things hold me back from being convinced that it is generally a good thing.

The first is that nobody ‘owns’ email – however, significant uptake of Google’s AMP would see email being more reliant upon Google, and a ‘default’ ownership may happen.

The fact that nobody owns email is one of its strengths and so this may weaken email as a channel. The second is something I’ve been speaking about since Hotmail Active Views (the forerunner to AMP) was launched back in 2010.

Aside from some very basic RSVP and form-fill functionalities, having fully interactive emails (i.e. being able to browse the website within the email), will require a significant change of consumer behaviour as the inbox is a very busy place, and getting a subscriber to commit to not being side-tracked form this ‘busyness’ may be difficult.

The average inbox has messages coming in regularly and there are many benefits to taking the subscriber away from this busy push channel and depositing them on a well-designed e-commerce site or landing page.

Humans love novelty and new things, and a new inbox message is just that. So, the chances will be very high that they will be interrupted when browsing the website within the email, potentially resulting in more bounces and fewer conversions.

The obvious industries are travel and e-commerce, with the focus being on customer service and making the experience easier and better for their customers.

Despite the drastic transformation in the world of web development, emails have substantially remained the same.

If you want to take action through an email, you have to generally click on the CTA, open another tab, or go to the website.

The advent of dynamic AMP emails has paved avenues for interactivity that simulates mobile apps. It allows the subscriber to RSVP to an event from the email itself, fill a questionnaire, select a meeting time, reply to a comment, etc. It enables interaction with the content from the Gmail client without having the need to visit the website.

Every industry will be able to derive advantage from this technology but it will be particularly intriguing to execute it in cart abandonment emails, thereby driving better conversion rates.

The obvious answer that comes to mind is e-commerce, but I think it's a bit early to say which industries will benefit the most out of AMP in email.

I'd bet that we'll get surprised by some super creative campaigns in verticals. we wouldn't normally associate with innovative communication.

Publishers, heavy machinery manufacturers, automotive, NGOs – I imagine it'd look great in every scenario; not necessarily in terms of conversions, but perhaps in terms of the amount of buzz it's going to generate around the most successful brands.