Email for the Future

Naina Raisinghani 0:29
Hello, everyone, my name is Naina Raisinghani. And I'll be talking to everyone here about the future, and why we believe why we at the end project here believe that the future of email is incredibly dynamic. Hopefully everyone can see my slides. Perfect. Yeah, let's get started. Um, just a quick introduction. My name is Naina Raisinghani and I'm a product manager on the AMP project. And what the AMP project is, it's a web framework that helps, that helps developers really create web experiences really quickly, really easily and really fast web experiences. But we also realised very quickly that the same like Web Component framework that we were developing for the web had a lot of use in the email space as well. And that's what we'll be talking about today. But first, let's actually talk a little bit about email, even outside of dynamic email, right, we all use email for a via variety of communications almost every day, even more. So right now, because of the pandemic. You know, we use it to make virtual plans with our friends, we check out promotions, from places we like to shop and local places that we want to support, we probably get like updates from all the social networks that we're using, we use it to provide feedback. And there are just a whole bunch of reasons why folks are using emails these days. In fact, email is so popular that about their that there are about 3 billion users or like 2.6 billion users that are using Google workspace every month, which is the corporate product. And in 2019, there were about 300 emails that were being sent every single day. Now, this is before the pandemics, you can only imagine how much that is increased. So it's really hard to overstate how critical email can be to people. It keeps us connected to a bunch of things that are important to our both our professional life and our personal life. However, EMA has also been around for a long time, it's been around for a few decades. And so over that time period, the web has evolved very significantly, right? We've gone from these really static articles to like dynamic content that we can like dynamic apps that can help us get jobs done. Dynamic websites and providers, really complex interactions and interactive pieces of journalism, for example. For example, in the early 2000s, you didn't think that you could run a spreadsheet or like a presentation in your browser. But that's exactly what we're doing today. Like, that's exactly how I'm presenting to you today, right using Google Slides. And over that same time period, while the web has evolved, email has stayed roughly stagnant. There have been a fair few innovations in how we manage and process email and email clients, for example. But the actual content that's being delivered by these email clients is pretty static, right? It's the same email that can include some text and images and some links, nothing more. Right? It gets out of date very quickly. For example, like if you get a notification saying your product has shipped, you could have checked that email and 10 weeks later, and the product would be delivered. But that email will still say product shipped, right, and they're not really click clickable interactable, or you can't really do anything in the email. So it's kind of strange, that email plays such a central role in our personal and our professional lives. And then while the web that has evolved so much, over two decades, has really left email behind and like, then there has been no evolution in the email scenario. So that's why we really are interested in really are excited about the space of dynamic email or emails that are interactive.

And that's why we created an email, right? It's a standard that allows email senders to include this richness and the interactivity of amp, which was developed for the web. And it allows them to include this inside the email messages and really helps bring email forward to the 21st century. And that's a pretty big deal, right and for email support a bunch of totally new use cases in email that weren't possible before. It allows you to make your email more interactive by providing you this clickable interface right inside your messages. so users can for example, browse products and explore content without leaving the email client. For example, think about a carousel of products, which could be their abandoned shopping cart, after email also allows you because like it, like any other framework allows you to keep the information that is being surfaced in that email up to date. So users won't really see stale information when they open up the email. So for example, for that shipping notification use case I talked about Every time the user opens that email, you can pull for information and get the most correct up to date information. The good has shipped, it's now in transit, it's now been delivered, for example. And thirdly, and most importantly, you can now use your email as a surface to take action instead of like actually just reading things. And then like going and performing a task on the web page, you can actually start performing tasks right within the email, allowing to see your email as a much more interactive to do list. But the best thing about an email is it's compatible with existing emails, right? It adds to this overall current email standard, rather than replacing it, it's just a new mind type to include your email body. And the best thing is, if, for example, your client can't support after email, or there needs to be a fallback. That's absolutely doable as well, if the email is not renderable. For some reason, you just fall back to the traditional HTML, HTML email, meaning you're always providing your users with a strictly better experience. And the best thing about an email is, you're bringing the same web components that we built for em for website, and you're able to bring them over to the email space. So for example, you can create a carousel of products, you can have dynamic data that's being fetched, you can actually have a timestamp that helps the user understand when we're when this data was last fetch and a whole bunch of other components that really allow you to really think outside the box when you're designing emails. And obviously, with any other new technology that comes about, you really need to think about when using M for emails is beneficial for you. For example, if you really want to reduce the friction that it takes to perform a task in an email, that's pretty much a good use case for you. If you are building really like transactional templated emails that you want users to interact in. Again, that's a great use case, if content is changing really quickly, like that shipping notification I talked about. And free was a great use case. And a really, and the fact that if you ever want to be pulling information from a server, and showing that information to your users, and for email is a good use case for you. And we've we announced this back in 2019. And it's been really exciting to see like this product evolve over two years and see both b2b businesses as well as b2b as well as business to consumer business. Companies actually use em for email for a lot of interesting use cases. And I'll just quickly share some of them here. Right, so we start off with just Google's back to school email promotion, the next marketing team actually sent out some back to school emails using m components, which really allowed them to like, for example, have a lot of dynamic data that was like, for example, in abandoned cart, right in the email. We were also able to turn like this really long email have a bunch of images and a bunch of links to click into this carousel that really allow the user to get all of this data without having to be overwhelmed by a very long email. And it really looks much more visually pleasing as well. Pinterest also took it one step further, right. Pinterest is the social network for ideas, it sends users, and it sends users email notifications about ideas that they might be interested in pinning, for example. And the great thing is with an email, the user can just click into that email and pin anything that they want. And they'll see that reflected back in their Pinterest board. And they can do all of this with one click within the email, just like they would do it everywhere else on the web. And they can see a few new ideas. And they can pin the new ideas that they're interested in without having to leave the email surface. Lending trees also experimenting with, for example, an in email loan recommendation survey that's powered by an email. So you, for example, can fill in a survey within the email and really understand what your loan options look like.

Ecwid, which is, which is a shopping platform has really enabled a really bunch of interesting use case, they're an e commerce platform for merchants, that allows merchants to really quickly set up an e commerce site. And with an email Ecwid users can actually send their customers really interactive catalogue of products that they might be interested in. And the users can then click through and like click through these products, look at the details all within the email without having to leave that space. aquatt has also gone and done something really interesting, which is implemented like this really simple email verification message that users get that allows them to verify right in the email. So most of us have probably received an email verification email. And what we have to do is go click on it, it opens in a new tab, we verify there and then we come back to the email, we mark it as done or we archive it or be deleted. But now you can just do that all within the email without having to leave that stuff. It's really helping you reduce friction to like getting things done. And Ecwid is also further like taking that whole shipping notification use case I talked about and is actually implementing real time data and is actually sharing real time data about your users order status right in the email. So you click on that Same email and will always be providing you with the most up to date information about your package. And then also, they've really taken forward this whole idea of like, intro of abandoned cart emails and really push it forward by really helping that email stand out a lot more by for example, having a carousel of image images, having a accordion that basically shows all the product details, the sizing, etc, right within the email allowing the user to make a lot more of an informed decision. And while these are really great use cases have actually gone and seen success with this right Ecwid. merchants who have been using these this format of abandoned cart emails have seen their sales increased 82% of average, at 82%. On average, because they were using amp for email, and saw that users that their actual users which our e commerce merchants, were able to see an increase in recovered sales by about 300%. That's a lot of that is a lot of money going right into the e commerce merchants pockets again. Now Oh Yo, which is another is a travel booking site that's based out of India actually sends users travel recommendations that they can then explore within the email. And with an with with all your new amp emails, user can easily browse options, see larger photos about each accommodation options. And they can really view details and really decide whether or not this property is something that they're interested in all from the email surface. They can also for example, filter right within the email surface, as you can see right there. And not only are these emails really informative, and super cool, all you actually saw that in a pilot, this had a direct impact on their click through rate and conversion. So for example, these are these anchor emails are actually a 50% higher click through rate than traditional emails, and had a 60% higher chance of actually converting the user. And this is a lot of money that is again, going back to the company. Find domestic which is a loan calculator back in Italy actually created this loan calculator that you can see very nice, that I talked about earlier, and the user can really like actually completely customise what kind of loan they're looking for. They can filter on things, they can customise information. And the great thing is, since this is all being done in the client, there's zero latency, right as as the users clicking through on multiples on multiple options, the entire experience is updating on the fly, allowing them to really like make a much more informed decision and play around within the email without having to go to another surface, helping them convert much more easily. And that actually was what they saw in their data as well, right, they saw 103 33% improvement in their click through rate when they were using amp for email. Skip the phi has also implemented has also looked at an email for the entire shopping process. And they're really trying to take that entire shopping process and implement it within the email. Here you see an example of like one of their clients, and the data that they saw their client caught was called play issues. And as you can see, when they actually started sending out Skipper files and emails, they saw that there was increase in revenue that they saw 37% and the increase in revenue that was being generated from email. And they saw that they were actually able to reduce the number of ns subscriptions by 52%, which method a lot more users were finding these emails, useful and valuable information. And these are all a lot of direct to consumer use cases that we've talked about companies like Pinterest Ecwid,

as well as Skipper fi is actually helping users on make better personal decisions in their life. But we strongly believe that app isn't just good for marketing campaigns or trying to engage with customers, but also enabling business to business use cases or productivity use cases as well. And that's something that the Google Docs team has, and the Google Drive team has really doubled down on, you can take commenting in Google Docs, for example, what would happen before was a Google Docs would send users an email notification when someone mentioned them in a comment on a document or a spreadsheet, etc. The problem with these emails was that they would very quickly go out of date, right? For example, if I checked if the email was sent at 1230, and I checked at 1pm, they were there could have been eight more comments since then. And I would get eight emails updating me about all of this. So this is a increasing the amount of stress I see like in my email inbox as a as somebody who's coming to work, but it's also out of date emails. So with a new amp emails from Google Docs, when someone mentioned you in your comment, you'll see an up to date comment chain that in Gmail where you can easily reply or resolve the comment. That means again, you're saving time you have the context needed to reply to that comment read within the email, you can obviously still choose to go to the doc if you feel like you need a lot more context, but it really allows you to speed up your workflow. I know that I as someone who's like been using this for the past year and a half I find it such an integral part of my life that I can't see going back to receiving one email per comment in a comment chain, right? That just sounds overwhelming and not very useful to me right now. And recently, Google Drive actually build upon the success that they saw with these Google comments and launched a new use case. So when someone requests an access to a file in your Google Drive, you'll receive an email with an Access Request up to now you don't have to click on Share, share access, go to that document, then get access to that and then come back to email. But now Gmail users will be able to manage that request directly from that email without actually leaving the message. Specifically, what happens is you'll receive a dynamic email that lets you review that request, choose the access level, so for example, whether you want them to be able to edit, comment, view, etc, and then grant access directly from the email. And it's not just google that's doing these productivity use cases right? Zapier is about to start sending emails actually allows you to restart tasks, for example. So here you can see that you can actually just click right there. And then that allows you to replay your hand up task right from the emails without going to a new surface, confirming your option, then coming back. Now dispatch, which is an interactive email builder tool has actually created this really cool in email survey. So you can see that instead of like asking your users to respond to a survey, and then have them go to another form where they fill it out, the user can just fill in that survey right from that email. This is again, much more likely to help users convert and like actually get the task done that you are seeking from them. As well as actually like a product, they also have a product review template. So for example, if somebody has bought a product from your cart, and you're using this page, they're much more likely to actually leave a review within the email because that's much it's that much easier to do as the entire form is right there for them as opposed to having to click to another experience and then come back. And you can see that they've also created a like a bit of a chat client inside the email, right? The that does allow the user to like kind of like for example, get support within that email for like when they really have are having trouble maybe finding the correct size for a product or just finding something in some information about the product. Now Guanxi is another company is a professionals professional services automation solution. And they what they've done is they've created some very useful emails that are powered by IBM, for example, allows it allows their users to approve and collaborate like on different deliverables such as like actually setting up timesheets or like sending out quotes or invoices, and then allows them to approve this relatively quickly. And the great thing is because the entire context of the approval process and the information needed to make that approval, is within that email. It just allows like people who are approving this information or seeing this information to do so much more easily.

And you know what, there's a whole bunch of other use cases that we think and for email empowers, both in the consumer space or in the marketing space, but also in the professional space. So really, what I would encourage folks to do is to just sit down and think about, what kind of usefulness Do you want to provide to your user that this was not possible up till now? Do you want them to be able to interact? Do you want them to be able to get their jobs done much more quicker, or have much more up to date information or have much more enriching information, then maybe that's one way that you can think about and for email, what new use cases does enter email aren't we are this ability to have dynamic and interactive emailed unlock for you. And obviously, like, once you've thought of that use case, you actually need to be able to start sending these emails out. And just on the delivery side, we're really excited that we've partnered with a lot of the more popular players all the way from Adobe campaign and Adobe genuinely to Salesforce to sendgrid. And there's more on the way right, so you will have a lot of delivery partners that are willing to help you send out free emails as well. And I talked about skip a phi. But there are other folks who are actually helping you create and design and for emails as well, such as stripe or pigeon, express, Pidgin dispatch, etc. They have these really great visual and for email builders, and there are other vendors, we're also working on similar solutions that are on the way. And if you're looking to test your email Litmus and node mailer, are a couple of popular testing platforms that already support an email. And I met as I mentioned before, it's really important that we also engage with email client so that they're able to render the actual, we are able to render the actual answer email. And if you're sending your emails to folks, we're using Gmail mail.ru yahoo mail, and hopefully in the near future AOL mail, you're able to send them and emails and the best thing is, you won't have to actually segment your users and say, Hey, I'm only going to send this particular really interesting use case to for example, some From gmail.ru, or Yahoo Mail, you can always specify a fallback to your amp email, which will render us traditional HTML email. And that allows you to really think through a use case once and have a really great an email experience, but have a really strong fallback HTML experience as well. So that's roughly the space of an email, right? It allows you to bring these really engaging experiences into your emails, like by unlocking a whole bunch of never before seen use cases, and really transform emails, from these static flat messages to these really dynamic interactive, like, kind of mini applications. your emails can fetch, like up to date information and allow users to take actions right from the message. And the great thing is it's compatible with a lot of the tools that you were already using for delivery, for testing for designing. And most importantly, it works with a bunch of popular mail clients. And the great thing is you don't have to really, you don't have to really be thinking or what like do I need to send in an email or HTML email, as long as you really think through the design of your email, your client, your users were using clients that support an email will get the benefit of that, but others will also get a very strong HTML email. And with that, I'm at the end of my talk. If you want to learn more about amp for email, you can go to App dot Dev, so that's a MP dot d v. And there's a lot more information there about an email, what kind of use cases you can build, what their requirements are to get started sending emails, and a whole bunch of other information. And that's that's it on my end, thank you so much for listening to this really short and like whirlwind introduction on amp for email. Again, my name is Naina Raisinghani and thank you so much for having me.