Gmail's New Dynamic Email Will Be A Bonanza For Marketers

Google has this week announced the biggest upgrade to email, as a communications mechanism, for at least a decade, with the launch of ‘Dynamic Email’.

Dynamic email, which is essentially AMP for email, was first announced in mid-2018.

It aims to turn emails from static documents into dynamic, web page-like experiences. AMP for Email is coming to Gmail, but other major email providers like Yahoo Mail and Outlook will also support AMP emails.

Gmail product manager Aakash Sahney:

“Over the past decade, our web experiences have changed enormously— evolving from static flat content to interactive apps. Yet email has largely stayed the same with static messages that eventually go out of date or are merely a springboard to accomplishing a more complex task. If you want to take action, you usually have to click on a link, open a new tab, and visit another website.”

Dynamic email now means these messages can become interactive.

Email audiences will be able to RSVP to an event right from the message, fill out a questionnaire, browse through a store’s inventory or respond to a comment, all without leaving their web-based email client.

Good Ol’ Email Is The New Black

Dynamic email is a long overdue innovation and one which will no doubt further enhance email’s creds as perhaps the most effective online marketing tool.

At least for driving conversions anyway, if nothing else.

As organic opportunities online, via social channels, have deteriorated in recent years and with online ad costs continuing to climb, email is very much back in vogue.

Or, in other words, as earned media and paid media have gone south and north respectively, owned media is the medium of the moment for smart marketers. Good news for anyone in the email space.

The renewed appetite for email can be viewed in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) space.

For example, the email and customer relationship management (CRM) tech space is booming, with the past 12 months seeing major M&A activity:

• Adobe acquired Marketo for US$4.75bn in Sept 2018
• Twillo acquired SendGrid for $3bn last month

Dynamic Email Support and Roll-out

During the testing phase, Gmail has partnered with a cross-section of organisations, including the likes Booking.com, Despegar, Doodle, Ecwid, Freshworks, Nexxt, OYO Rooms, Pinterest and redBus.

If you get emails from any of the companies above, maybe check out your inbox to see if you can note anything different? Pinterest, for example, has been using Dynamic emails to allow people to pin items straight from the email inbox.

Since Dynamic email works similarly to regular AMP pages, companies already using these should find the transition relatively straightforward.

The format supports many popular AMP markup features, including carousels, forms and lists.

At least at launch, setting up could require a bit of developer support, but popular email building tools are iterating quickly. The following email service providers have announced support for AMP for Email, enabling their users to send more interactive emails:

• Litmus
• SparkPost
• Twilio Sendgrid
• Amazon SES and Amazon Pinpoint

With more undoubtedly following in the next few months. 

Dynamic emails will begin rolling out to Gmail users on the web this week, with mobile support coming soon.