4 Tips for Getting Started with Kinetic Email

The Apple iOS 15 privacy update means some of the metrics and tactics you may have relied upon in the past to track data and communicate with customers may not work as well anymore.

You first may have heard of kinetic or dynamic emails a few years ago. The promise was it would be the new hot trend. With privacy becoming more of a concern, and brands wanting to improve customer experience, it’s back.

Many marketers will need to adapt the real-time content strategy they had to these new changes. Kinetic email is one option. It may have taken a little bit longer than expected to get there, but we think kinetic email is poised to be something special, especially when improving customer experience.

If you want to explore more of what you can do with kinetic email, here are some tips to get you started.

Understand what is and isn’t kinetic email

Sometimes, the term kinetic is a catch-all for any time of email that drives engagement. But, while we all want more attention from our customers, not everything is kinetic. 

We believe kinetic emails are those that require the reader to take an action. These include everything from games and surveys to carousels, sliders, and wheel spins (among others). With each of these, your reader has to perform a direct action to engage with the email.

While animated gifs, videos, and images are all critical parts of an effective email strategy, they aren’t kinetic.

Add more image personalization

In many cases, marketers are still underutilizing personalization. Even when it comes to using the basics, like name personalization, there’s a lot you can add to your emails to make them stand out. Pull the data you have to update the content you’re offering in your emails dynamically. 

Tie in kinetic emails with personalization to encourage customers to click, swipe, and reveal to get discounts, product recommendations, and coupon codes. Then think of the next level of personalization too. For example, use the reveal to share information like loyally status and rewards.

When you add this level of image personalization into emails that are already interesting and engaging, you’re standing out from the competition.

Gather customer insights

One of the biggest benefits of getting more active engagement with your emails is that you can create better customer experiences, giving your readers even more of what they like and want.

The email above is a great example of this in action. With live polling, you have a direct line to your customer’s interests. When they click that hiking is their favorite summer activity, that’s just one more data point to add to their interests. 

Use it to create more personalized content. Send all your customers who love hiking to a page that features great content around hiking, product recommendations, and more.

Know when you can use it

Developing your entire email strategy around kinetic emails is great until you realize that not all users are going to have the same experience. There are some service providers and platforms where kinetic emails won’t translate. 

So to help combat that, have a fallback plan ready. Build other options and designs into HTML that still share an effective message and ties into the look and feel of the rest of your content. That way, you’re still giving them a great customer experience, and it doesn’t look like their emails aren’t up to par.

How Zembula makes it easier

One of the main reasons it’s been difficult to capitalize on kinetic email (until now) is it’s advanced; there are many moving parts. For someone not versed in CSS that can make setting up campaigns feel daunting. 

Zembula can help. With our platform, we make it really easy to start creating emails. And they don’t have to be complex. 

If you want to learn more, get in touch. We’d love to share more examples of how you can get started with kinetic email in your next campaign.