12 Interactive Newsletter Strategies and Examples You Need to Try

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Check out these interactive email campaigns and ideas that you can easily use to increase engagement.

We love email marketing. It offers an awesome ROI and can help you achieve all kinds of objectives. There’s just one problem with it… email marketing can get boring. 

This is why you should know how to jazz things up with an interactive email. 

An interactive newsletter is one of the best ways to turn your email marketing strategy into something truly magical. If your emails aren’t getting the clicks and engagement you were hoping for, then adding interactive elements might just be your secret to success. 

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about these emails, including how you can start to create your own interactive emails.

Let’s dive in!

  1. What is an Interactive Email?
  2. Why Send Interactive Newsletter Content?
  3. 11 Interactive Email Strategies You Can Use
  4. How to Create Interactive Emails
  5. Tips for Interactive Emails

What is an Interactive Email?

An interactive email is an email that has engaging, clickable elements inside of it that you can interact with.

While most emails have interactive elements like a hyperlink leading to your website or blog, interactive email marketing can take this a step further. Truly interactive emails include the interactive element inside the email, instead of linking out to another page. 

This could be something simple, like a GIF, or something more advanced, like an interactive eBook. Whatever the case, the idea behind interactive emails is that they take a regular, static email and make it a lot more exciting and engaging. This can have many advantages for email marketing. 

Why Send Interactive Newsletter Content?

When you add interactive elements to your newsletter, you step into a whole new world of email marketing. 88% of marketers say that interactive content helps brands differentiate themselves. So, if you want to stand out, then you should try to get more interactive.

Here are some of the main reasons why you should start using interactive email elements:

  • Interactive features can improve your email engagement and click-through rates in a big way. These emails are a lot more tempting and easy to click on. Get this metric up, and it can also have a positive impact on your email deliverability.
  • Interactive emails will help your brand stand out from the competition by doing something different. This is a great way to increase brand awareness and recognition.
  • You can use interactive email marketing to encourage specific actions from your audience. This can help you create segmented lists, which is an important email marketing strategy.
  • Interactive emails are fun! Your audience will have more reason to open them and engage with them, which will improve your overall email marketing metrics. This will also generate a more positive experience for your audience, helping you improve brand loyalty.
  • Creating interactive emails lets you do a lot more than your standard email newsletter. If your marketing goals or objectives change, adding interactive elements could help you achieve them. 
  • Interactive emails grab attention. Different interactive elements stand out from the rest of the user’s inbox. This provides a lot more reason for the user to engage with your content.

12 Interactive Email Strategies You Can Use

The great thing about interactive email marketing campaigns is that you have so many different directions that you can take. Here are a few of the best examples and strategies of interactive content that email marketers can use. 

  1. Contests
  2. Calculators
  3. Countdown Timers
  4. Videos
  5. Quizzes
  6. Games
  7. Image Carousel
  8. Feedback Survey
  9. Interactive Infographics
  10. Animations and GIFs
  11. Shopping Cart Emails
  12. Accordion Elements

1. Contests

Contests are an awesome way to add interactivity to your email marketing strategy. You can add interactive contest entry forms and elements that get users actively engaged.

Why run a contest? Well, it’s one of the best ways for any kind of brand to promote products and boost sales. 

You can gather all of your contest entrants into an email list, and target them with promotional content after the giveaway is over. They get a special offer, and you get more sales. Win-win. 

Contests are also an excellent way to generate high-quality leads for your business. You can capture all contest entries and add them to your mailing list. As long as you give away your products or services as a prize, then you know that entrants are interested in your business. 

You can use a tool like Wishpond to create engaging contest entry forms. These can be added to landing pages and included in your email marketing.

2. Calculators

Calculators are one of the most popular ad effective interactive elements for email marketing. 

No, we don’t just mean numerical calculators. Instead, we mean any kind of specific calculator that helps your audience understand an outcome. For example, you could add a tool that calculates how much a user would save through an annual subscription. 

Calculators like this are great because they’re very inviting and easy to engage with. They can also help you share some valuable insights and incentives for people to support your business – like highlighting savings.

3. Countdown Timers

Countdown timers remain one of the most effective ways to create a sense of urgency. They’re also one of the best interactive elements to add to your emails.

If you’re running a time-based promotion, giveaway, or special offer, then having a countdown timer really makes your audience jump to action!

Add timers to your emails or landing pages, and you will probably see a significant increase in conversions. 

interactive email

Source: Email Marketing Agency

4. Videos

Ok, videos may not be the most interactive elements that you can include in emails, but they’re certainly more engaging than static images. 

Try to embed a video into emails and see how this increases engagement. Videos are one of the most powerful forms of content, and they’re extremely effective at helping your brand communicate a message. 

Most people prefer watching short videos to reading emails, so including an embedded video can be a great marketing strategy. This could be an existing YouTube video, a social media video, a webinar, or a video that you made specifically for your email.

interactive email

Image: Hubspot

5. Quizzes

Everyone loves a quiz!

Including a simple quiz in your interactive email newsletter is a fantastic way to get your audience more engaged with your email content. 

You could do a fun or silly quiz, like “what type of dog are you?”, or you could do a more serious quiz, like “how effective is your marketing strategy?”. Whatever the case, just make sure it relates to your brand. 

All you need to do is create a form with a few multiple choice answers, and then reveal the quiz results once all answers are filled out. 

interactive email

Image: Enginemailer

6. Games

Games are another fun thing to add to your interactive email design. You can use games as a fun way to get your subscribers actively involved in your content. The right kinds of games can also help you push more sales. 

For example, you could include a spin-the-wheel game in your email body. Users could play to win different prizes, like discounts for your product or service, or free shipping. You could also do this through scratch cards. This could be a great way to drive up impulse buys.

interactive email

Image: Designmodo

7. Image Carousel

An image carousel is a simple way to ramp up your standard marketing emails. 

You can add a string of product images, product review images, or anything else you want to communicate visually. Users can swipe through the images to reveal a kind of story. 

It’s engaging, it’s visual, and it’s an excellent way to communicate important information. 

And people love image carousels! On Instagram, for example, carousel posts achieve X% more engagement compared to regular single image posts. They also give you more room to include extra information in your email, without overcomplicating it. 

8. Feedback Survey

Feedback survey forms are another great example of interactive elements that you can add to your newsletter. 

This is often done by asking a question, like “How likely would you be to recommend our product?” with a choice of numbers, star ratings, or even smiley and grumpy faces, to click on. 

Elements like this let you gather more feedback from your audience very easily. They also increase engagement and clicks on your emails, which can have many positive advantages.

interactive email

Image: Stripo

9. Interactive Infographics

Infographics are one of the best ways to communicate dense information in an easy-to-digest format. The only problem with them is that they can be a bit… boring. 

Introducing interactive infographics!

With these infographics, you can add things like hover effects that reveal more information after the user holds the pointer over the infographic. You could also click on the infographic for more details and insights. 

This is fun, engaging, and a great way to present complex information in a fun way.

10. Animations and GIFs

Interactive email newsletters don’t only have to be based on elements that you click on. Instead, you can add interactivity through moving images, animation, video, flashing colors, or any other kind of dynamic content that grabs the user’s attention. 

A flashing color in an interactive email is a great way to make your newsletter stand out and inspire action. This is relatively easy to include, and it can make a big difference to your overall email marketing results. 

11. Shopping Cart Emails

Sending interactive emails is an excellent eCommerce marketing strategy to help you recover abandoned carts. This is done by sending shoppers an email with their shopping cart included in it. 

Interactivity here can be a powerful tool to get users to follow through with their purchases. You could even add extra marketing strategies to this, like adding a discount coupon into the email. 

interactive email

Image: Hubspot

12. Accordion Elements

Adding accordion elements to an interactive newsletter is a great way to condense a lot of information into a short email. This is when you include clickable dropdown sections in your email. The recipient can read the headings of each section, and click on them to reveal the information.

Accordion emails are a great way to make long newsletters quick and easy to read. They make it easy for the user to navigate to the exact information they want to read about, without having to skim through a lengthy email.

How to Create Interactive Emails

Inspired to make an interactive email but you’re not sure where to start? Don’t panic, it’s easier than you think. 

First, you need to have a good email marketing platform. This is what you use to create your emails, add elements, and send email blasts to your lists. 

Wishpond is one of the easiest email marketing tools for businesses. Users can simply choose a template for their interactive email and customize it with their own information. The great thing is that there are already dozens of email templates for all kinds of emails and industries. Wishpond also has built-in interactive elements, like buttons, that you can easily add to your email body.

If you want to add an interactive element like a form, then you will need a form builder. If you want to add a contest or giveaway, you will need a tool for this. Wishpond has integrated tools for these in the same platform. You can also create a separate landing page, and link to this from your email elements. This is the easiest way to send interactive emails. 

Tips for Interactive Emails

Interactive emails can help you achieve fantastic results. However, as with any kind of marketing email, there are a few best practices and tips to keep in mind. 

Let’s cover a few of these:

  • Add variety to your interactive emails: Don’t send the same types of interactive emails over and over again. Instead, break these up with different interactive elements and static image emails to keep your audience interested. 
  • Optimize loading speeds: Fast emails are incredibly important for good deliverability and engagement. Try not to sacrifice loading speeds for interactivity.
  • Make it easy to skim: Interactive emails can contain a lot of information, but they should be easy to digest and understand from face value. Users don’t want to struggle to understand what your email is about.
  • Remember your email design: Your email should look good without being too distracting. Interactive emails are eye-catching, but they shouldn’t be confusing.
  • Test your email elements: Users click and engage with different interactive content differently. Always A/B test your different interactive elements, like colors or button tet CTA, to see which gets the best results. 
  • Keep it simple: Different interactive elements let you do all kinds of things, but this should never create a complicated experience for the user. Keep it simple, and you will see a lot more engagement. 

Conclusion

Adding interactive elements can take your email marketing strategy to a whole new level. Something as simple as a feedback form or a star rating question could help you ramp up your engagement in a massive way. This will have many other important benefits to your email strategy (like improving deliverability).

Try the interactive elements and examples above, and see how they work for your business. You’ll find that they’re a lot easier to implement than you thought!

Want to learn more about email marketing? Check out some of our related guides below:

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