How to create interactive customer experiences

Customer experience (CX) is not a passing trend. As marketers, we’re no strangers to fads coming and going. However, the dramatic shift in consumer behavior that happened in 2020 is not going anywhere, anytime soon.

Unfortunately, there is a significant disconnect between expectation and reality in CX. In research carried out by Adweek and Accenture Interactive, they found that while 80% of brands believe they deliver a superior customer experience, only 8% of customers agree.

Brands have to go further and break down boundaries to meet customers’ expectations.

What are interactive customer experiences?

Customer experiences have changed. Brands can do more with customer data. From personalization to augmented reality, savvy shoppers know brands can deliver exceptional experiences.

As a result, CX is less about fulfilling wants and needs and more about meeting increased expectations. Customers compare experiences with diverse brands across different industries. That means that a shopper who has a positive experience buying plants online expects a similar experience when buying anything; groceries, takeaways, jewelry.

Interactive experiences will help you continuously meet these experiences. Interactive content personalizes customers’ interactions with your brands and boosts overall engagement.

Think online questionnaires, web-based calculators, or gamified content. It’s content that lets users personalize and participate in it.

In-email customer experiences

Interactive experiences can come in many formats, but in recent years, email marketing has made massive strides towards providing customers with unique experiences.

AMP for email

AMP for email is a powerful tool that revolutionizes customer experience by allowing you to build web-like experiences right in their inbox. It allows readers to interact with your email and choose their own path.

This innovative feature is an excellent asset when it comes to showcasing various aspects of your brand, products, or services. While offering captivating and personalized customer experiences, you can also guide users towards accomplishing a specific goal. However, you also want to drive users to complete a specific goal. Using an AMP-powered carousel feature, email recipients can flick through your highlighted products or campaign photographs before clicking on your email’s main CTA. For example, a ‘register your interest’ button.

Similarly, customers can discover their own pathways by choosing what content they’d like to see in your email campaign. You can later use these insights to deliver a more personalized experience throughout their journey.

Real-time personalization

To create long-lasting relationships with customers, it’s important to provide a hyper-personalized experience. Real-time personalization is a way to achieve this by using up-to-date customer data. Typically, pulling in a subscriber’s first name using data field is an example of this.You can also use location data to provide location-based dynamic content, to make the campaign super relevant to the customer. By segmenting data and getting to know your audience, you can create targeted content that resonates with them. 

GIFs and videos

GIFs and videos bring joy and delight to your email openers. They grab your subscribers’ attention immediately, keeping them engaged and scrolling down your marketing.

Embedded videos have a great engagement rate which ultimately drives more conversions. Animations and videos make communicating complex ideas simple. In a matter of seconds you can explain your latest product launches and business updates.

Advice from interactive experience experts

Odicci helps brands boost customer engagement and drive customer loyalty with interactive experiences such as quizzes, games, and product finders. These are the top tips on creating interactive and engaging emails from CEO Founder of Odicci, Jacques Prothon:

Creating emails that work: how to jazz up your email design

Just because customers are interested in receiving emails doesn’t mean that you’re keeping them engaged. Thankfully, there are many things you can do to ensure your customers are engaged with your emails. We’ve listed six ways to jazz up your email with interactive experiences.

Gamification: can you beat the high-score?

By introducing gamification into your customers’ experience, you can enhance their engagement and increase clicks and conversions. By asking people to play a game such as a memory game or a matchmaker you are tapping into the creative potential of your subscribers. Add an engaging moving gif design to drive clicks and enjoy your dwell time stats go through the roof as people will be engaged for a long time on your website. Thanks to this pinball game Virgin Holidays experienced a 47% click-through rate.

FOMO: are you one of our lucky winners?

By using elements of accomplishment, envy, ownership, and scarcity you are driving your audience towards clicks. When signing up, subscribers are expecting to receive some type of value, such as a coupon, free gift, or a contest entry. If you want subscribers to continue being engaged with your emails, keep providing something of value and make them interact online with an online scratch card or shake your phone to reveal a prize. Feelunique is driving subscribers to an interactive summer spin for a chance to win special discounts.

Enhance customer experience: swipe your preference

To enhance customer experience Central England Co-Op used an interactive “Tinderesque” swipe survey behind email to collect customer preferences and deliver more personalized emails. The swipe survey running behind an email marketing campaign drove a 28% click-through rate with 20% of surveyed customers sharing their preferences. The swipe survey is a great experience to boost clicks and drive engagement.

Rewarding customers: thank you, here is something for you

Subscribers are looking for positive experiences with brands. One of the most popular customer rewards in use by many brands is when a subscriber reaches a certain level of a loyalty program. Paperchase uses various experiences to reward members of their TreatMe Loyalty program, here is an example of Spin the Wheel on PayDay for TreatMe members only.

With loyalty you can also combine experiences with other moments such as birthdays, special moments in the year, or the launch of a product by giving exclusive access.

Customer Feedback: how did we do?

After a purchase or a delivered service use interactive experiences to ask for feedback and make that experience engaging, fun and above all easy. TeamSport used a Net Promoter Score survey to get feedback from customers after their races. Valuable information is collected for each track and customers can be rewarded afterwards.

Intrigue: what does the future hold?

Instead of engaging your audience with a standard marketing message, use email to create interest, curiosity or intrigue. Use a clever hook to invite subscribers to an interactive personality quiz or a product profiler and deliver a personalized brand interaction

A great way to deliver the message and drive clicks from your emails to these engaging experiences is to use moving GIFs that demonstrate how the reward, game, quiz or interactive promotion works in a few seconds. Using moving GIFs is the perfect way to show what engagement and reward(s) subscribers can expect. To get the best results you can create moving GIFs that are personalized or tailored to a segment, or audience.

Summary

As we know email marketing is one of the best tools to drive sales and convert leads. With interactive experiences it is possible to substantially increase your click-through rates and conversions whilst delivering great value to your audience. Don’t be intimidated these interactive experiences can be published in just a few clicks. Give it a try or contact Odicci for more information about our pre-built interactive experiences, with more than 80+ out-of-the-box experiences you won’t be disappointed.