[FAQ]

Hi,

I’m an email developer in London, and I’ve been reading about AMP for Email. The concept of making emails interactive like a small website, with things like forms and carousels, sounds really powerful.

However, I’m not clear on the practical side of it. How widely is it actually supported by email clients? What are the main benefits, and more importantly, what are the biggest challenges or drawbacks to implementing it?

I’m trying to figure out if it’s a technology worth investing our development time in for our marketing campaigns, or if it’s still too niche.

Cheers for any insights.

[Jeff Bullas]

A great question. AMP is one of the most exciting but also challenging technologies in email today.

Short Answer: AMP for Email is a framework created by Google that allows you to embed interactive, website-like components directly into an email. It goes beyond static text and images, allowing for things like live forms, image carousels, and accordions that a user can interact with inside the inbox.

The goal of AMP is to turn a static, read-only email into a dynamic, app-like experience, reducing the friction for a user to complete an action.

With a standard email, if you want a user to fill out a form or browse a gallery, you need them to click a link and go to your website. AMP for Email aims to eliminate that step. It allows you to build emails with interactive elements, such as a product review form with text fields and a submit button that works inside the email, an image carousel a user can swipe through, or collapsible content sections that can be expanded or hidden. It can even pull in live data, so the content is up-to-date the moment the email is opened.

However, there are significant challenges, which is why it has not been universally adopted. The first and biggest issue is limited email client support. AMP is primarily supported by Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Mail.ru. It does not work in Apple Mail or the vast majority of Microsoft Outlook clients, which make up a huge portion of email users. This means you must always build a standard, non-AMP version of your email as a fallback for those recipients.

The second challenge is technical complexity. Building and testing an AMP email requires specialised development skills and is far more time-consuming and expensive than creating a standard HTML email. You also have to go through a strict registration and approval process with Google to even be allowed to send AMP emails. For most businesses, the effort required currently outweighs the benefit, and focusing on creating a great traditional email with compelling text and images that links to a fast-loading landing page is still the more practical and effective approach.

Cheers,
Jeff

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