With 5.6 billion active email accounts and 293.6 billion emails sent and received every day, email marketing is a massive strategy that almost every retail brand employs to help grow their online and in-store business.
But with so many email sends, how will you help ensure that your brand is separating yourself from the competition and staying top of mind with your target audience? One of the easiest ways is to interject dynamic email elements into your sends. Unlike static elements, which remain motionless, dynamic elements move within the email. This can include anything from GIFs to product carousels, and videos to game-like experiences.
The only thing for certain about dynamic emails is that they do help you stand out from the boring batch-and-blasts that many brands rely on. And, with many consumers shifting their shopping habits online after the outbreak of COVID-19, standing out from the crowd is more important than ever.
Here’s a list of 7 great dynamic email template examples to give you some inspiration to carve your own world-class email campaign.
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7 Examples of Dynamic Email Content
1. Hollister: Incorporating Dynamic Imagery –
One thing that Hollister does well with their email campaign is incorporating dynamic, instead of static, imagery in their email. While your eye is drawn to the GIF of the two people sitting on the beach, you can actually see that their logo at the top of the email is also animated. This is a great example of a company that has gone above and beyond to add little details to their email that will catch customers’ attention and convince them to click through to your site.
2. Typo: Using Animated Text
When many retailers think about animating their emails, they really only consider how they can animate the people or products that appear within their creative. But this isn’t the only way that you can bring movement into your email sends. Take a look at the dynamic email example from Typo below. They took the concept of animation and made it specific to their product offering. Because they focus on stationary, they decided to animate the text within their email. This isn’t just a great example of animation, it’s also a great example of a company taking the strategy and applying it directly to their product offering.
3. J.Crew: Incentivize Engagement
When you’re sending your emails, the last thing that you want is for your customers to open it, quickly skim the text, and then delete it forever. The goal of every email send that you create is for customers to interact with your content and, ultimately, click through to your site. A great example of this comes from J. Crew and their continuous scroll dynamic email below. It’s fun, it’s on brand for them, and it is simple enough that the consumer knows exactly what actions they need to take.
Such emails ensure that the reader scrolls through the entire email while increasing the probability of conversion. In a similar fashion to the J. Crew example, Carnival Cruise Line made use of creative scroll as well. This time, though, they took it a step farther by incorporating movement in their email. It sure is worth scrolling till the end. Beyond that, the copy is funny and on brand, taking cue from the fact that many people on cruises go diving. Additionally, they do something that J. Crew should have considered, by featuring really clear and concise value props at the end of the email. These value props will make it much more likely that someone clicks through to your site.
4. Mr. Porter: Using Cinemagraphs for the Movement
Ok, first things first, what exactly is a Cinemagraph? I had that same question not long ago. A cinemagraph is like a GIF, but different. While it looks more simplistic, and can actually be a bit harder to create. However, for many brands, it’s a lot classier and a more luxurious way to incorporate movement into their emails. Essentially, a cinemagraph is a still image, in which a small, repeated movement occurs. For Mr. Porter, they decided to have the fire in the background move while the rest of the image stayed the same. This is a great way to take on-brand ads and imagery and tweak them slightly to make them more appealing.
5. Wired Messenger: Gamification Technique
When it comes to dynamic emails, it doesn’t just have to incorporate examples where a customer sits there passively. A great strategy to employ in your dynamic emails is gamification. In case you aren’t familiar with the term, gamification simply means the act of incorporating game-like elements in your marketing or advertising campaigns. This can be anything from wheel spins, to slot machines, to arcade games. A great example of this in email comes from Wired Messenger. They decided to makesgood use of interactive elements in their Halloween holiday email. Incorporating this arcade-style game into their email helps increase intractability and get consumers to click the CTA. That being said, it’s best to incorporate your email sends and gamification within one platform, so that you aren’t spending more marketing budget than necessary.
6. Forever 21: Product Carousel
Lastly, we wanted to touch on creating dynamic imagery around your products within your email sends. Carousels showcase multiple different products within an email and allow the consumer to click through each one. This is a great way to showcase new offerings you have, or to send a consumer who has looked at products on your site a sliding carousel of everything they had previously seen in order to convince them to come back and convert again. Below are a couple of good examples of this. The first is from Forever 21, who uses their carousel feature not just to focus on specific products, but to highlight all of the different subcategories within their brand.
The collapsible menu along with the navigation button makes it more attractive. The second example is from Adidas, and we really love how this email send is set up. Like Forever 21, they are also choosing to use their carousel feature to highlight all of the different categories of apparel that they have within their brand. However, they take it a step further by clearly, and succinctly highlighting the value prop that consumers can expect once they click through to that category of clothing. This is a great way to get people to click through and shop on your site.
7. Invision: Creating a Visual Hierarchy
So, we recognize it isn’t always possible to include dynamic imagery and features within your emails. That’s ok. Static sends are also incredibly high performing, especially as eCommerce has begun to blossom with the shift consumers are making to online shopping after the COVID-19 outbreak. The important thing to remember when doing this is to create a visual email hierarchy. A good example of this comes from Invision. One good thing they did is still include imagery, which will help the performance of the email send. However, they took it a step further and incorporated visual hierarchy in their email. They placed the most eye-catching imagery at the top, drawing your eye into aspects that tell you what their brand is about. Secondly, they feature a clear and concise CTA and quote that is above the fold so that people don’t have to scroll down to see it. They highlighted this information in contrast to the imagery above by putting it on a simple white background, which also makes the CTA easier to see. Finally, they ended the email with a secondary CTA and social information that is great for people to interact with, but not the main focus.
The Key to Engaging Dynamic Emails
There are a lot of elements that go into crafting a successful email. All of them play a part in convincing your customers to click into the CTA and visit your website. But, one of the easiest ways to get this done is to include visually appealing, dynamic email elements in your send. These not only engage the customer, but they help you stand out from the crowd. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can create more dynamic email sends today, feel free to get in touch with one of our email experts.
