Latest / The Email Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Newsletters, Open Rates, and Subscriber Growth / How Interactive Email Elements Boosted Engagement by 25 Percent
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, have you ever opened an email and answered a poll right inside your inbox without clicking through to a website? That's called an interactive email, and for one D2C brand I've been following, adding a simple poll tripled their reply rate and lifted click to open rates by 25 percent. Luna: I've seen those—they feel almost like a mini web page inside the email. But a lot of marketers I talk to are still hesitant because of the technical lift. So what did this brand actually do? Lucas: Yeah, it's a skincare company called—well, I'll call them FreshGlow—they sell directly to consumers through their website, but their weekly newsletter was performing okay, but not great. Open rates around 20 percent, click rates around 2.5 percent. They wanted to get subscribers more involved without sending them to the site every time. Lucas: So they partnered with an email platform that supports AMP—accelerated mobile pages for email—and started with a single interactive element: a quick poll asking subscribers their favorite product category. The poll appeared right in the email body, and users could tap an option and see live results updated in real time. Luna: And that one change gave them a 25 percent lift in click to open? Not just a one-time spike? Lucas: Consistent lift over four months. But here's the thing—they didn't just add a poll. They also tested a product carousel that subscribers could swipe through in Gmail and Apple Mail. That's where the real engagement came from. The carousel had a 40 percent interaction rate. Luna: Forty percent? That's huge. But I'm guessing not every email client supports AMP. How did they handle fallbacks? Lucas: That's the key question. They used a progressive enhancement approach. For clients that support AMP, the email renders the interactive version. For everyone else, it falls back to a static HTML version with a clickable image that links to a web version. They made sure the static version was still compelling—same content, just not interactive. Luna: So the non amp users still got a decent experience? That's critical because you don't want to alienate half your list. What percentage of their subscribers could see the interactive version? Lucas: About 35 percent of their list was on Gmail or Apple Mail that fully supported AMP at the time. That's a minority, but the engagement from that segment was so high that it pulled up the overall metrics. And they saw no drop in engagement from the fallback group. Luna: That's a pretty encouraging result. And the technical implementation—was it a nightmare to code? Lucas: The first time, yes, because you have to write valid AMP HTML and also maintain a separate MIME part for the fallback. But once you build a template, it's reusable. They used a tool called AMP Email Playground to prototype, then worked with their ESP to send it. Total development time was about two weeks for the poll and another two for the carousel. Lucas: And interestingly, the poll actually generated responses that fed back into their segmentation. They asked which product category you're most interested in, and then the next email would show you products from that category. So the interactive layer doubled as a data collection tool. Luna: So it's not just a gimmick—it's functionally useful for personalization. I really like that. But I remember a few years ago, interactive emails were talked about as the next big thing, but adoption was slow. Is it finally taking off in 2026? Lucas: It's definitely growing. Gmail and Apple Mail have both expanded their AMP support, and more ESPs are baking in interactive features without requiring custom code. I think the barrier now is more about creative strategy than technical capability. Marketers need to figure out what kind of interactivity actually adds value for their audience. Luna: Right, because a poll might work for a skincare brand, but for a B2B software company, maybe an interactive product demo or a calculator would be closer to the mark. The principle is the same: get the user to do something inside the email, not just read it. Lucas: Exactly. And FreshGlow saw another benefit: their reply rate jumped threefold because some subscribers used the reply to email feature after interacting with the poll to ask follow-up questions. That turned their newsletter into a conversation channel. Luna: That's a nice side effect. So what would you say to a marketer who's on the fence? What's the minimum viable test they could run? Lucas: Start with a single interactive element—a poll or a simple rating—that doesn't require dynamic data. You just need AMP support and a fallback. Test it on 10 percent of your list for two months. Track click to open rates and reply rates. If you see a lift, expand. That's what FreshGlow did, and it paid off. Luna: And if they're worried about development cost, I know some newer ESPs like Mailmodo and Knak offer drag and drop interactive components. So you don't need a developer for basic polls. Lucas: Great point. The tooling has matured a lot. Alright, let's wrap up with a forward-looking question: Do you think non-interactive email will eventually feel as dated as plain text emails felt once HTML became standard? Luna: I think for certain industries, yes. But a lot will depend on how well interactive elements perform across clients. If Apple and Google continue to expand support, I could see interactive becoming the norm within three to five years. Lucas: Interesting. Well, we'll be tracking it. That's it for today. Thanks for listening.