What is Inbox Commerce?
Consumers can predict the content of the emails they receive from fashion brands – static emails with text, maybe a few embedded images, and links that direct them to websites or mobile apps to take subsequent actions.
However, the introduction of Inbox Commerce, powered by Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for Email, has finally shaken things up. This technology lets you bring the conversion funnel directly into your shoppers’ inboxes, revolutionizing the basic HTML emails consumers use. It enables dynamic and interactive emails, with forms, shopping carts, and more embedded inside the email for highly engaging email marketing campaigns.
Inbox Commerce allows potential customers to browse and search for products, use promotions, leave product reviews, and complete surveys, all within the email itself- bringing the conversion funnel straight to your shoppers’ email.
This shortened pathway to action also leads to a frictionless user experience and reduces redirects and drop-offs, which is a difficult feat to achieve in today’s climate of attention recession. Ultimately, these improved and simplified user experiences lead to customer loyalty, higher retention rates, and conversions for your brand.
With a myriad of use cases designed for each stage of the shopper lifecycle, Inbox Commerce can also go hand-in-hand with your personalization efforts to provide the most relevant and convenient experience for your shoppers. Specifically for the fashion industry, inbox commerce offers a major opportunity for innovation and meets the growing needs of customers who expect brands to know what they want and make it easy for them to journey until purchase.
Innovative uses for fashion brands
Here are some exciting use cases for fashion brands to level up their email campaigns and see higher conversions from their innovative approach.
- Product search & discovery – Allow users to perform product searches that resemble website-like search bars to give quick access to the products they seek within the email.
- Product catalog display – Dynamically bring your product catalog into the inbox with personalized product carousels. Showcase interactive elements that allow shoppers to browse and evaluate options as well.
- Gamification -Add fun to your email campaigns by Using interactive games to offer your shoppers discounts or rewards with games like ‘Spin the Wheel’ that keep them engaged with your brand.
- Interactive chatbot – Offer customer support via an interactive chatbot within your email so that your shoppers can receive quick answers to their questions.
If these Inbox Commerce capabilities piqued your interest and you want to hear from a real brand that has implemented them and seen success, look no further than Myntra, India’s foremost direct-to-consumer fashion retailer under the Walmart umbrella.
By adopting inbox commerce, they achieved a remarkable 140% increase in survey responses, functioning as zero-party data that will power future personalization efforts with consumers’ data privacy in mind. Myntra’s AMP-powered email campaign was recognized with the “Best Use of Interactive Email” award at the prestigious MediaPost EIS awards in Q4 2022 – solidifying the impact of this innovative strategy.
Wrapping up
Email marketing is key to success for fashion brands, and the capabilities enabled by Inbox Commerce are shaping this channel in powerful new ways. The seamless integration of interactive and dynamic content within emails is a powerful tool that allows brands to meet their customers’ growing needs, and in some cases, blow their minds. Customers can browse and search through the product catalog, provide product ratings & feedback, and receive answers to their questions via interactive chatbots in fewer steps and in a shorter time, demonstrating their dedication to providing customer-centric experiences.
Moreover, inbox commerce is up for the challenge of meeting the growing demands of customers and the changing digital environment. Most significantly, the growing concerns around personal data from consumers have led to tighter privacy regulations across the globe. Moving forward, fashion brands need to prioritize data security and obtain explicit consent for collecting and using user data. This puts increased importance on zero-party data, which is a key benefit of utilizing Inbox Commerce.
Secondly, consumers’ expectations for frictionless, convenient, and, therefore, personalized experiences will continue to challenge fashion brands in the future. While Inbox Commerce marks the beginning of another innovative period in email marketing, the most exciting opportunities lay in what could be achieved in combination with other email marketing technologies and strategies. This technology offers an exciting path forward for forging personalization with interactivity and app-like capabilities within emails to offer tailored yet engaging experiences that foster meaningful relationships with customers that were impossible with the traditional email format.
With readily available solutions for many of the key challenges that brands face today due to growing consumer needs, Inbox Commerce is poised to become an integral part of any email marketer’s strategy for growth and building loyalty.
If you want to learn more about Inbox Commerce, download our latest ebook.
* Written by NETCORE’s TEAM
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by Fashinnovation’s columnists are their own, not those of Fashinnovation.
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