Welcome to the first blog in our ‘Ask the Expert’ interview series, where we bring you insights from industry leaders on the latest trends in the world of email.
We are thrilled to feature Jay Oram, the Head of Development at ActionRocket. With over eight years of experience in email marketing, Jay is an expert on product development, growth, and marketing. He helps businesses achieve their email marketing goals through creative design and innovative technology.
In this Q&A blog, we bring you Jay’s insights on AMP emails. Whether you’re a marketer or a developer, you will find information that helps improve your email marketing strategy. Let’s get started!
a) Tell us about yourself. How did you get started with marketing and what made you venture further into development?
I started with digital marketing when the ecommerce company I worked for wanted to get on Facebook when it was just beginning. From there, I worked on integrating social with the website, then moved on to manage all the digital marketing, including email. I then got frustrated with the drag-and-drop editor in the ESP and started coding – thereafter I just got more and more into email development, and now I do that full-time.
b) What was your response to the launch of AMP emails in 2018? And how has that evolved over the years?
I was fully in love with the idea of AMP emails from the beginning, went full-on into creating prototypes, learning everything I could do, and then we started presenting it to clients. We sent one of the first brand AMP emails from Braze in 2019, and it was a huge hit.
Ever since, we’ve been growing the number of AMP sends with all of our clients when it fits their aim. But we always produce an equivalent HTML/CSS interactive email as well.
c) As an email developer, what would you suggest to brands who want to get started with AMP but are apprehensive of the technical capabilities required?
First of all, make sure you need AMP – if you are creating that same experience for other users with your HTML emails, or you don’t have a specific use, then you don’t need to use AMP.
But if you’ve found the perfect use case, then there are so many tutorials, templates, and drag and drop editors now that could be used. Then if you are still unsure, reach out to an agency like ActionRocket for some outside help.
d) What kind of challenges have you faced while developing AMP emails? Are there any areas with scope for improvement in AMP emails?
There’s always scope to improve! Adding the ability to target dark mode and take into account users’ preferences would really help. Also, adding CSS keyframes would enable more micro-interactions to be animated. Then more adoption amongst email clients.
e) What is the most creative, interesting AMP email use case you were involved with? What kind of AMP components did you combine to create it?
We have created two really cool AMP emails, one was a journey to select your sports preferences and favorite team and then show the latest results for that team live in the email.
The Second was an in-email preference center after signing up. Both use amp-bind, amp-form, amp-selector, and amp-accordion.
f) Apple doesn’t support AMP for emails. What are your thoughts on it?
Obviously, the more email clients, the better, but Apple supports almost all CSS, so we have found that, apart from pulling in live data, you can give the same interactive experience in Apple Mail or iOS mail using HTML/CSS. Even after MPP, we now have a way to bring live, up-to-date images into Apple mail, so we can have a relatively similar experience with live data as well.
g) 2023 has just begun. What kind of trends do you foresee in email marketing and AMP? What’s in the future for AMP email development?
Trends we have seen for development is a huge jump in the tools available, whether that is the development workflow using components, better API integration, or something as new as react.email – all of these can make a developer’s experience much more streamlined.
AMP has had a huge influx of no-code tools that allow marketers to create AMP emails.
h) What advice would you give to email developers that are getting started on AMP emails?
I’d say to just code something, find a project you are passionate about, and code an AMP email to bring something cool into the inbox. Maybe grab the last interactive email you sent and see if you can recreate it with AMP and go from there.
The second thing I would encourage anyone learning email development is to join the email geeks slack group, follow along with topics on Twitter, and ask for help – we are a friendly bunch!
Want to learn more about AMP emails and get more insights? Watch the on-demand recording of the third episode of Netcore’s “For The Love Of Emails Thursdays” US series webinar. Jay Oram shares additional knowledge in a conversation with Chaitanya Chinta, Global Head of Email Business at Netcore.
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of the leading experts in the email marketing industry.
