AMP Up Email Engagement and Conversions with Accelerated Mobile Pages
The Google train just keeps on rolling and this year one of the updates will be an expansion of Accelerated Mobile Pages into email. This is a very thrilling development for any business that uses email marketing. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are poised to greatly enhance both engagement and conversion metrics for email marketing, and as a company that provides AMP Website Development, we are excited to make use of this rollout as it becomes available.
What exactly is AMP?
Accelerated mobile pages, or AMP for short, is an open source program built on AMP HTML, which is an open coding framework based on existing web technologies. It was announced by Google in late 2015 and AMP web pages first appeared to web users in February of 2016. Numerous publishers and tech companies, including Twitter and WordPress, were initial collaborators on the project.
The project was based around the idea of increasing internet speed, specifically for the mobile internet. To reduce load times, AMP trims HTML tags and reduces page rendering which basically sheds weight from your web pages. It would be like running with a heavy backpack versus running without it; you are much quicker.
This is combined with Google’s content delivery network (CDN) called Google AMP Cache. The cache is a proxy-based global CDN which allows lighting fast speeds because the global network is able to shorten the distance between request and delivery.
There are numerous benefits for any business in using AMP, which is why as a top web developer, we added AMP website development as one of our core offerings.
How AMP will boost Email Conversions
The idea behind combining AMP with email is to help modernize it and make it more actionable. By adding more functionality, Google has determined they can increase engagement. This would be accomplished by allowing different tasks to be accomplished from within the emails themselves, rather than performing those tasks outside of the email client.
One example they provided would be confirming an email account during a transaction with a website. Rather than clicking on a link to open a new tab on the browser for the confirmation step, instead, you could instantly access the confirmation page itself.
The overall goal is to eliminate steps and clicks a user has to perform in specific areas to create a more efficient system for both customers and businesses. While the primary focus is always going to be on Google’s clients, which seems to be most of the population, businesses will gain an advantage by reducing the number of emails they need to generate to complete processes and transactions.
One drawback to email contact has always been inbox overload and expanding AMP into email should reduce the backlog of emails which users need to navigate. Additionally, the reduction of clicks needed to complete tasks will increase engagement for email marketing. From a content marketing standpoint, AMP will allow users to receive and access content within the email itself instantly. Even more importantly, this functionality will be geared towards mobile users’ ability to access and view emails on different devices easily.
A few large players in the industry such as Pinterest and Booking.com have already started the implementation of AMP into their emails to improve their overall level of service.
Other Benefits to Using AMP
There are already numerous benefits to using AMP beyond the email expansion which many businesses will find beneficial:
- Ad Revenue – Ads can directly impact the page load speed of a website, especially when using third-party ads. In some cases, ads not only load slowly but also prevent other elements from loading until they are finished. This has created a “walk the line” approach for balancing ads and page speed to ensure customers stay satisfied. If a business uses AMP for their site and uses an ad network with the AMP-ad extended component the load speed is much faster overall. This increase allows the usage of ads more readily without a drop in site performance.
- SEO – Customer satisfaction and page load speed are ranking factors that Google considers with their SERP results. Reducing load times by even a second can not only boost SEO due to that ranking factor but also provides a higher level of customer satisfaction due to the improved user experience.
- Analytics – A core point of the AMP program is to reduce website redundancy to increase speed by trimming HTML tags. This also has an added benefit of creating more streamlined analytics as there is now a single set of tags used for data reporting.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that the Accelerated Mobile Project has proven extremely effective for businesses looking for better website performance. The ability to AMP up email engagement and conversions with Accelerate Mobile Pages is just another reason to look into using AMP if you aren’t already.
Be sure to check back every week for great new Lounge Lizard blog articles.
