promodo-case
13 April 2023

How AMP improves email campaigns: A case study from a performance marketing agency

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Table of contents
  1. The company
  2. Challenge
  3. Solution
  4. Results: How AMP emails engage subscribers
  5. How AMP content exports to ESPs and CDPs
  6. Blitz question from Stripo
  7. Plans and new challenges
1.
The company

Since its introduction in 2019, AMP emails have become a marketing trend because they allow you to make emails interactive and grab the attention of your subscribers. The Promodo agency uses AMP emails with clients in different industries. Below, we show some of the results.

The company

Promodo is a performance marketing agency in the top ten agencies in direct media, content, and influence marketing in Ukraine. Two teams of email marketers, copywriters, and designers, as well as a developer work on email marketing.

One important aspect of the Promodo approach is the continual use of new technical opportunities for email newsletters, so that clients get the maximum engagement and results from their email marketing, stand out among their competitors, and endorse an image of a progressive company.

Challenge

Google announced the creation of AMP for email in March 2019, and the technology became available to Gmail users in July. Clients, especially huge brands, follow technical innovations and ask agencies to use AMP in promotional emails.

Promodo decided to use AMP content to make email newsletters more memorable, engaging, and effective. At the same time, they wanted the email marketing team to be able to create these newsletters, rather than allocating time and resources to designers and developers.

Solution

Stripo offered AMP functionality in 2019 in the email template editor as an AMP email builder and AMP image carousel drag-and-drop block to speed up creating AMP emails.

Thanks to this, Promodo began to use AMP almost immediately after the opportunity appeared in Stripo, which was also in 2019. When AMP emails first appeared, they were new not only to email marketers but also to subscribers.

The first AMP integrations were not as well developed as they are now, and the Stripo team stepped in and helped to build emails.

“During the preparation of the first AMP emails, we had a special chat with the Stripo team, and that helped us set up these emails so that everything worked correctly with support for all of the functionalities at that time.”

Svitlana Fursa, head of the retention marketing department of the Promodo agency

Then, in CDP Yespo, which the agency uses for email newsletters, they installed the Stripo plugin, and part of the work with AMP moved there; for clients whose email newsletters are sent from this system, AMP features are created right there. The most complex blocks are made in Stripo and exported to CDP Yespo using perfect integration.

For Promodo customers who use other ESPs, email templates and AMP blocks are developed in Stripo.

Results: How AMP emails engage subscribers

Agencies use different tools for different emails, chosen according to their vast marketing experience. At the same time, it is crucial to do it creatively and in various ways. We will now present some examples of different types of AMP emails and how they work.

“The first clients for which we implemented AMP were Stylus and Intertop, and others followed. Usually, it goes like this. The client says: we found out that there is a new technology, and we want it.”

Svitlana Fursa, head of the retention marketing department of the Promodo agency

Product cards

Creating the first emails with interactive product cards took a lot of resources from our and Stripo’s teams because it was a complicated concept to implement.

We do not use this format often since it has a complicated layout with products in each email. It is easier to use smart containers, where all the information is pulled up when a link is added.

Here is an example of an email newsletter with AMP product cards made for Intertop. As you can see, thanks to AMP, the subscribers immediately see the product in all available colors and sizes, and then they can directly proceed to purchase on the site.

As a result, the conversion rate increased by 12%, even on Black Friday.

Example of AMP-selection module in email

(Source: Email newsletter by Promodo for Intertop)

Gamification

The agency also actively uses gamification in emails. It was one of the first types of AMP content in newsletters. Gamification works well with holiday newsletters. Subscribers love it and respond actively. While the first games were difficult to make, the team now knows how to do it, and subsequent iterations are significantly faster to make. The effect is very pleasing and worth the time spent.

Game: "Find a pair"

The game "find a pair" was made for the New Year's newsletter for the car tire shop Shiny&Diski. Subscribers who matched all of the pairs received a promo code. The result was a click-to-open rate increase of 27% compared to email newsletters on a similar day with products and a discount.

Email newsletter with AMP-game

(Source: Email newsletter by Promodo for Shiny&Diski)

Here is another example, this one for a Black Friday email campaign for the hardware and electronics store Stylus.

Email template with AMP-game for Black Friday

(Source: Email newsletter for Stylus)

Roulette game: “Spin to win”

For Karcher, we made a newsletter with a roulette wheel of the different cleaning equipment as prizes. Subscribers could spin the roulette wheel in the email to win a gift. This game produced a 17.5% CTR.

Email AMP-game roulette

(Source: Email newsletter for Karcher)

Puzzle game

We developed a puzzle game for the Easter email campaign for Bomba, an online store for digital and home appliances and electronics. Subscribers collected puzzles and received a bonus of 200 lei for purchases in the store. The click-to-open rate was 34.3% — a very good indicator for the industry.

Email template with puzzle AMP game

(Source: Email newsletter by Promodo for Bomba)

Here is one more puzzle game for the St. Valentine's Day promo email campaign for Stylus.

Example of email puzzle game with AMP

(Source: Email newsletter by Promodo for Stylus)

Carousels and accordions

The Promodo team used AMP accordions to optimize the email template. We needed to add many products and categories, which would be a long read for customers and inconvenient to scroll through. An accordion is easier to use—customers can click on the categories and see the products.

In addition, the accordion block can be used as a minigame to create intrigue, as in this example.

Email newsletter with accordion block

(Source: Email newsletter by Promodo for Napoli)

The carousel block makes emails more dynamic and engaging. It draws attention to promotions and sales in this apparel and footwear store example.

Email template with AMP carousel block

(Source: Email newsletter by Promodo for Intertop)

Important note: It is important to understand that AMP is a resource-consuming technology, even when emails are built using the convenient Stripo editor. For example, the development of a promotional email without AMP in the editor takes 3–5 hours (depending on the amount of information, the number of products, and required creatives), while an AMP email with a puzzle takes 7.5 hours, and an AMP email with a find-a-pair game takes 9 hours.

You should not add AMP to every newsletter, so as not to overwhelm subscribers. What works well for engagement is to occasionally add a variety of AMP content.

How AMP content exports to ESPs and CDPs

In CDP Yespo, AMP exports from Stripo perfectly. With other systems, there may be situations that are less than ideal, such as the need to copy the code via HTML and then edit this code a little.

Some ESPs—for example, SendinBlue, SendGrid, and Mailchimp—still do not support AMP technology. The technology will not work with any export method, and emails with AMP cannot be done. These are service limitations to consider.

Technically, this solution is possible: make AMP content on Stripo and lead all subscribers to the web version of the email so that they see the interactive content and features. But from a marketing point of view, this is not an effective way since there will be few transitions, and a lot of effort was spent on development.

Important note: Check if direct AMP export from Stripo to your ESP and email client is available. On the integrations page, enter the name of the service in the search bar. If you see the AMP icon, the content will export without problems.

How to choose ESP with AMP

Blitz question from Stripo

Did using AMP Stripo blocks save you time compared to HTML-coded AMP emails?

“Yes, of course. With ready-made blocks, especially with their simple editing and customization, we spent less and less time on pre-configured AMPs.”

Svitlana Fursa, head of the retention marketing department of the Promodo agency

Plans and new challenges

Now, in most cases, Promodo uses AMP for promo emails. The plan is to actively use it in triggered email newsletters and add it to automated emails, for example, subscription confirmations and other emails in the flow. It will be interesting to see how it works.

Do you want to make your emails bright and engaging with AMP?
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2 comments
Ethan Lessiter 11 months ago
How can we copy the Karcher Quiz you made?
Alina Samulska-Kholina 10 months ago
Hello, Ethan! We have a template with very similar mechanics “Spin to win” that you can edit yourself for your task. In addition, we will soon publish in our blog a manual on how to create a roulette game for Gmail, Yahoo and Apple Mail, as well as with a fallback for other mailers. Using the manual, you will be able to create such a game step by step from scratch.
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