Interactive Email Newsletters: 8 Content Ideas to Increase Conversions

With 3.9 billion daily email users, it’s no surprise that email marketing, particularly interactive emails, is one of the most used tools in sales funnels to generate leads and increase conversions.

In fact, according to HubSpot’s email marketing statistics, 35% of businesses send their subscribers and customers 3 to 5 emails per week.

It just shows that email marketing is still one of the most effective marketing channels for any business, especially online businesses such as eCommerce stores, blogs, and affiliate websites.

In this era of social media, influencers, and video content creators, email marketing still remains relevant for business. And that, dear marketers, is powerful!

But why do you think people would spend their time looking at your promotional emails when they can use that time to browse through their Facebook newsfeed or go through the rabbit hole of videos on YouTube or Instagram?

Solution? – Two words; interactive emails. But what are they? And how can they help boost your email conversion rate? Let’s answer all those questions for you.

What Are Interactive Email Newsletters?

Interactive emails are emails that provide more functionality and incorporate elements that require your subscribers to actively participate with your content instead of passively consuming it. It can be anything from adding items to their shopping cart to watching videos or playing fun quizzes straight from their inbox.

A well-thought-of email marketing strategy such as interactive emails will, in fact, help you make money. How, do you ask? For every dollar you spend, you can expect to get a $42 ROI average. (DMA, 2019)

The goal of an interactive email is to increase sales and make money online with your blog or eCommerce business. However, it does not follow the traditional sales marketing techniques of newsletters. Interactive emails are designed to entertain the readers and get them to respond to a call to action.

With so many types of interactive content that you can add to your emails, choosing the right one will depend on your niche. Once you find your niche market, you will get an idea of what type of content you should use for your emails.

Now, let’s quickly jump into finding top content ideas for creating interactive emails that will boost your conversions through the roof!

8 Interactive Content Ideas to Boost Your Sales and Conversions

1. Fascinate With High-Quality Visuals & How-To Guides

This may seem totally obvious but is still an underutilized point. By using high-quality photos, videos, and other types of media, you can easily get one step ahead of the traditional email newsletter format.

Instead of writing blocks of sales-y text, you can deliver the message with the creative use of media. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all!

In this example, Apple did a really great job of marketing without really sounding too sales-y. It explains to users how to pre-order the latest edition of the Apple iPhone series.

The most important element of this email is the “pre-order” button. The goal is to get people to click that call-to-action button and start converting leads.

Moreover, setting up “Step-by-Step Guides” through clickable buttons is an excellent strategy to include in your emails. Knowing what to do upfront may drive some of your prospects to purchase your products.

Undoubtedly, Apple has an excellent marketing strategy. You would always find rolling images, hidden product descriptions, and interactive step-by-step guides on their website or emails.

Tip: You can even send emails that are not promotional at all. Just make it interactive enough for people to notice and the brand image will stick. However, make sure you still put a call-to-action button just in case.

2. Embed Interactive Quizzes and Calculators

Embedding interactive quizzes in your email will surely excite readers. Many people like answering quizzes especially if the results can tell them more about themselves or promise to provide some value.

Seventeen Magazine and Cosmopolitan are some of the pioneers in making these types of quizzes and engaging their readers every time.

Tip: Buzzfeed is well-known for its interactive quizzes that drive traffic and engagement like nothing else! There are tons of quizzes about pop culture all over social media. You may always take some inspiration from there while creating your own quizzes.

BONUS: Want to create your own quiz within minutes and without any fuss of coding? Signup to Outgrow for free and create your quiz using a drag and drop builder! Get the embed code and simply paste it into your emails. It’s easy, fun, and boosts conversions multifold. 

3. Use Templates from Email Software

If you want to create interactive emails, you may sign up for email software. Choose any of the email autoresponder software available and that should be good enough to create interactive emails and send them out consistently at the same time.

Here are some examples of interactive email templates that you can get with email responder platforms:

4. Ask Questions Through Quick Surveys & Polls

Asking questions is important. And, surveys are a great interactive email tool for doing that! Surveys help you collect data about your audience and segment them as per their demographics, preferences, etc. This would help you better understand your customers’ needs.

Adding surveys will also allow you to get insight into what your customers think about your products. Moreover, asking the right questions will help you improve your product and manage your inventory.

Here is an excellent example of an interactive survey email from Really Good Emails.

It leverages the popularity of the trending series “Game of Thrones” and engages readers with a question. Fans of the show voted for their favorite character while learning more about the product.

Here’s another example from QuestionPro.

BONUS: Want to create your own survey or poll within minutes and without any fuss of coding? Signup to Outgrow for free and create surveys, polls, and forms using a drag and drop builder! Get the embed code and simply paste it into your emails. It’s easy, fun, and gets people to open and interact with your emails. 

5. Incorporate Fun With the Use of Memes and GIFs

Emails should be fun. If you think that a viral meme or GIF is relevant to your business, you can use it smartly to induce emotions like humor into your interactive emails. These fun elements also give your emails a human touch in times of automation.

Neville Medhora is one of my favorite email copywriters and he has created a brand out of drawing funny stick figures to illustrate otherwise boring marketing concepts. To give you a taste, here’s a simple GIF he added to a recent email to get his audience’s attention.

“Hey…..hey you.”

This is so simple, but so different that it immediately grabs your attention. By combining a simple gif in an unexpected way, you can easily separate yourself from the myriad of emails clogging your prospects’ inbox.

6. Add a Personal Touch

Another important factor is to make sure that you add a personal touch to your emails. Addressing the email with the first name of your subscriber adds a personal touch, but that is old news.

Buzzfeed started something that would drive eCommerce sales in 2020, and it is a very clever and genius strategy! Adding a personalized recommendation quiz to your email marketing is a real game-changer and an email finder can help you get more sales.

Basically, it is a quiz that narrows down your potential customers’ choices and allows them to discover the best-suited product for them based on a series of questions.

Think of it as a virtual way of assisting a customer in finding what they need. Now can that spike a customer’s interest? We think it surely can!.

This personalized quiz by Sephora is an excellent example of a product recommendation quiz.

By answering a series of questions, the tool algorithm can narrow down the best product choices for the customer. It is not only interactive and exciting, but also helpful for customers with different skin types and skin sensitivity.

BONUS: Want to create your own product recommendation quiz within minutes and without any fuss of coding? Signup to Outgrow for free and create product recommendation quizzes using a drag and drop builder! Get the embed code and simply paste it into your emails. This will provide real-time value to users and increase sales. 

7. Add Clickable and Entertaining Events

Clickable events or buttons in an interactive email could be used to induce curiosity in customers. It could be anything from hidden product descriptions to roll-over effects that reveal more information when users actively engage with them.

If you really want to get more people on your eCommerce platform, you can step up your game by adding clickable events that are made to entertain and add value.

Here are some excellent examples from Really Good Emails:

This email is an excellent example of multiple clickable events in one email. It has a variety of elements for the readers to explore and also includes a call to action button.

Let’s look at another great interactive email example from Bose that can easily get people interested. It promotes a Black Friday sale, and without even revealing the actual message, it gets people interested to know more. The use of the scratch card is really a smart tactic to induce curiosity in users.

8. Add Games

If you can add clickable, scratchable, and other types of content to your emails, why not go for a full browser game embed. Introduce gamification in your emails and see your users spend minutes or even hours on your email.

This is an example of a great interactive email with gamification. Now, who wouldn’t love to play such a fun game?

Tip: When choosing a game for your email, make sure it is an arcade game that has replayability elements such as high scores or levels. As I mentioned before, people love to challenge themselves and others.

Bonus Tip: Call to Action

As discussed before, a CTA button is a great way to ensure interactivity in your emails. However, while putting a call to action button, make sure you refrain from using words like “Buy Now”, “Shop Now,” and any other term that clearly spells out another sales pitch.

Instead, you can choose to put phrases like “Learn More,” or “This Way”.

Lastly, different companies have their own style of marketing. So, feel free to be as creative as you want.

Conclusion

There was a time when email subject headlines were so witty, it got you as far as to open the email. However, as soon as you see the content, you would take it straight to the trash bin, or worse, unsubscribe.

You don’t want this happening to your email newsletter. Losing even one subscriber can say a lot about your marketing strategies. Fortunately for digital marketers, interactive email newsletters are taking off, and are proving to be very effective in increasing conversion rates.

To sum it up, you need to start by boosting your subscriptions, then keeping them hooked with the use of engaging interactive emails until they take the action that you’re always looking forward to.

Want to try embedding interactive content like quizzes, polls, giveaways, etc. to turn your emails interactive? Signup here for free and create one for yourself now! 

Author Bio:

Hanson Cheng is the founder of Freedom to Ascend. He empowers online entrepreneurs and business owners to 10x their businesses and become financially independent. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.