Smile or Frown? The Case for Easy-Click Emails

Email engagement seems to be the eternal struggle for marketers, especially as brands fight for attention in crowded consumer inboxes. Whether offering promotions, highlighting trends or seeking reviews, emails that annoy or require too many steps will be ignored by most. And yet, even the most sophisticated brands still make these mistakes. For example, Amazon’s review mechanism (used in its email marketing program) discourages responses, especially from mobile users. Amazon prompts users to rate products after purchases from one to five stars. Easy enough – except that users must click on the email and then log into an Amazon account to make the rating. Who wants to do that? For brands striving to maximize email engagement and conversions, the trick is to make things simple — which is why some brands have been using easy-click emails. What’s an easy-click email? An easy-click email drives engagement by simplifying the user response mechanism. Instead of bombarding users with lengthy copy and complex options, easy-click emails present a single, clear question with only a few visual responses. The benefits of easy-click emails are endless. They make it quick and painless for subscribers to offer feedback, remove the hassle from responding on mobile devices and do not require brands to complete complex data analysis to understand the results. They’re also quick to create, with just five elements that go into an effective easy-click message: Basic header with the brand name and logo Simple question that prompts a response One to three large response buttons Segmented decisions that deliver specific content based on each response Basic footer with copyright information and other essentials Expedia delivered a masterful example of easy-click after the infamous Delta flight debacle last year when flights were grounded for hours due to computer errors. To customers forced to rebook flights through Expedia with other airlines like WestJet, they asked a simple question: “Happy with your WestJet trip?” Customers could reply by clicking a smiley face or frowny face emoji, with no need to log in, visit another app or give more feedback if they didn’t want to. Based on each response, Expedia could send more personalized follow-ups like apology emails or various promotions. Easy-Click Emails Inform Stronger Campaigns Marketers may initially wonder about the value of easy-click emails, since they aren’t directly promoting specific products or deals. But they provide crucial customer data that later enables marketers to deliver more personalized emails after the fact, as in Expedia’s example. Personalized email is important because customers are more likely to convert from emails targeted to them based on their specific actions or feedback. Easy-click responses are a simple way to gain that information and integrate it in future campaigns. Just by looking at the numbers, adopting easy-click emails is a no-brainer for brands. They require little time on the marketer’s end and create minimal hoops to jump through for the customer. And we’ve seen that they increase engagement. But beyond that, they strengthen brand relationships with users and increase customer loyalty in ways that shape far more than email engagement.

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Smile or Frown? The Case for Easy-Click Emails

Jason Warnock

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Jason Warnock