Improve your customer experience by letting your users interact with your emails without leaving the inbox. With Marketing Cloud’s new feature, interactive emails, you can now embed reviews, progressive profiles and lead forms directly in your emails.
What are the benefits?
This gives you an easier way to collect data and increase engagement because of a friction free solution. For example, a user has signed up for an email send with only an email address, but we need more data such as name and preferences to be able to personalize the emails. Or a user made a purchase and we would like them to review the product.
Before, this was needed to be done on a separate page, so we sent out an email and asked them to click on a link to fill out additional information or tell us if they were satisfied with the product they bought. How many times have you received one of those emails and thought “Yeah, I’ll do that later”, because of the visit to the external page that is required? You probably have, at least once, and you’re most likely not alone.
With the new Interactive Email feature in Marketing Cloud, the customer will now be able to do this directly in the email, without leaving the inbox. One less obstacle to pass, which means we’ll be able to increase customer engagement.
When should I use it?
Start with asking yourself what you want your customers to do. Can that be done in an email, and if it can – should it?
Will it enhance your customer’s experience, and therefore improve your results? For example, will email interactivity reduce friction for your customers to take action? If so – interactive email is probably the way to go.
READ MORE
How does Marketing Cloud Interactive Email work?
The requirements for the use of Email Form block are the following:
Content Builder, as you will need an email template where you will place the Email Form block through drag and drop.
Cloud Pages, to create and publish an Interactive Email Page.
Data Extension, that can be created during the creation of the Email Form or built separately first.
When you create the email you choose the Email Form block and choose the Cloud Page destination as your thank you message, choose (or create) a Data Extension that will capture the responses and lastly you set the fields, both visible and hidden options.
You can choose from several different options when creating the form, for example the following:
Progressive Profile
Review
Case Form
Lead Form
Empty (start from scratch and create any form you like)
How do I configure the form?
Visible Fields
The visible fields are the customers input. You set the Label, which is visible in the form, the Data Attribute, which is the field name in the receiving Data Extension (this is required) and if you’d like you can add a description that is shown below the label for extra clarification.
Hidden Fields
You can personalize these fields through AMP-script or personalization strings as usual, but you can also add for example an ID-field. All answers will then be connected to that primary key, so if the user responds a second time that user’s row will be updated.
You can also add two primary keys to your form, to give you the possibility to vary after your needs. If both primary keys match, the row is updated. If only one is a match a new row is created.
Multiple Button Option
You can put in several buttons as choices, where the user can select for example several different interests. You set one Data Attribute per option and the Field Value is what appears in the Data Extension, while the Button Label is what appears on the button.
Input Image
The same way you add button options you can add display images that show a clickable option. Add borders and colors to indicate when an option has been made.
Design
You style the form under the Design tab. Add padding, margin, border colors etc.
READ MORE:
What should I think of?
Keep the design clear and simple, make sure it is familiar and repetitive, so that there is no doubt this email comes from you and is safe for the customer to interact with. Don’t be afraid to call out the interactive elements, make sure that it’s clear for the customer that the action you’re asking them to take can be done directly in the email, there’s no need to leave it to find the form.
What’s more important is to always have a fallback experience design. Some email clients will not be able to show the interactive content, so you need to have a backup plan for those users. One option is to simply have no content instead of the interactive part. This is applicable if the main purpose of the email is something else and the form only is additional.
The other option is to have a static experience for those users, for example a link to a page with the same form. This is the better option if the form is a more important part of the email.
How can I use the data in Marketing Cloud?
Make sure to define what you would like to measure, depending on what you’re asking your customers to do. When you know that you can use the collected data to kick off customer journeys, personalize emails, update other clouds and initiate processes in other channels, to name a few.I need
About the author
Alexandra Hedin
Marketing automation specialist
Recoordinate
Connect with me: Linked In
With experience in data analysis, marketing automation, conversion rate optimization and web development, Alexandra has a unique skill-set that gives her the ability to understand and create complete customer journeys in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. She’s a problem solver and by looking at both details and the big picture, she always aims for the best possible solution to reach a smooth experience for both her clients and their customers.