Our experience on the world wide webular has changed hugely over the past decade. No longer do we dwell in a land of static content, but roam free amongst the fields of the interactive.
Apps! Animated page transitions! Machine learning! It’s been quite the journey, it really has.
And yet, one thing has largely stayed the same. Our inbox. Left out in the cold for reasons I can’t fathom, the virtual form has been left neglected, like a skanky old bag of lettuce at the back of the fridge.
Because when you really look at it – what is an inbox? A bunch of messages that eventually go out of date? A jumping-off point for finishing a more complex task? For a model that an extremely large percentage of us use on a daily basis, email has been surprisingly stagnant for long enough.
Enter: Google.
Better late than never, in March 2019, Google announced Gmail dynamic email as a new beta feature for their Enterprise and G-Suite clients. And following the success of this testing period, the whole database is now getting a shiny, new overhaul, with dynamic emails appearing in Gmail inboxes from July 2.
What does this all mean? Fundamentally, getting shit done just got a whole lot less fiddly. From RSVPing to an event to filling out a questionnaire; Gmail users can easily take action directly from within a message itself. Pretty major.
The update also ensures users are always seeing the freshest information. An example being, instead of receiving incessant email notifications when someone mentions you in a comment on Google Docs, you’ll now see an updated thread in Gmail, where you can reply or resolve the comment without opening any new tabs. And when you put it like that, it really is absolute madness it hasn’t been done sooner.
And our mates at G-tower aren’t the only ones giving some much needed TLC to our dusty, old inboxes. Companies such as Booking.com, Doodle, Pinterest and OYO Rooms have also started implementing dynamic emails. The full Marie Kondo treatment. Clutter out. Coherence in.
Whilst this is a massive (and necessary) leap for UI, the rollout also means a big-ass change for email marketing. When companies start to deploy dynamic mail, those precious click-throughs will be minimised. Cue collective gulp. Alas, fear not. This same technology will now mean consumers can click on that ‘buy now’ button in their email. That’s the middle man gone from your customer conversion journey.
This is a monumental shift in email, one that it’s important businesses pay attention to. Dynamic could change the way we look at CRO, and you can bet email optimisation is going to start taking up a lot more time in your weekly content meetings. And it should. This is exciting. Stay educated. You’ve got mail.
