How to create unique experiences in a user’s inbox with Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Though marketers have numerous channels at their disposal to communicate with their customers, email still remains a popular choice. After all, your customers have chosen to receive communication about your company or products, so brands should use this opportunity. However, many of us receive too many marketing emails that all look the same. So how can your brands stand out from the crowd? By using Salesforce’s new ‘interactive email’ feature which enables brands to take their customer interactions to the next level.

What is an interactive email?

Let’s start with the basics; interactive content is anything which requires the user to actively engage and participate with the content to access the full experience. Interactive email incorporates those same features into an email campaign. Due to technical challenges, some companies are still playing catch-up. However, Salesforce Marketing Cloud released a new feature in April 2020 which enables brands to give their emails this extra edge.

Named one of the top email trends of 2019, interactive emails empower brands to interact with their customers without having to first send them to their company website. This engaging way of keeping customers interested in your brand can increase the click-to-open rate by 73%.

Interact without leaving your inbox

Interactive emails can be used for a multitude of reasons and campaigns. A simple example is a rate and review campaign where customers can give their feedback directly in the email. Interactive emails can also be used for data enrichment campaigns, which enable you to ask your customers questions such as their birthday or product preferences, and have them fill in the information directly in their email. This data is then stored in Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud to be used in ongoing personalised campaigns. 

Personal is better

The information that brands gather via data enrichment campaigns can be used to further customise email content and facilitate the creation of hyper-personalised customer emails. Hyper-personalisation is where all your data comes together. An email with product recommendations can be based not only on recent purchases, browsing history and items that are usually bought together, but also by website behaviour such as how much time a person spends on each page and items they hovered over. Recommendations can also be based on gender, age, interests, hobbies and preferences, spending habits and geographical data. For example, if you know the location of the customer you can offer them shop-specific promotions. This takes website interaction to the inbox of your customers. By combining a user’s website interaction with data which they have willingly shared via email, you can provide them with more relevant content and (hopefully) transform them into return customers.

Stand out from the crowd

The email will remain a crucial communication tool in the near future. By using Salesforce interactive email feature, brands can stand out from the crowd of emails one usually receives. Furthermore, by personalising content and being able to engage with a brand, potential customers are more likely to read, remember and potentially convert.