June 17, 2019

AMP for email – What, How and When?

AMP for email – What, How and When?

“Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) 4 Email is a package that combines, HTML, CSS and Javascript to add more features into email development. Allowing for interactivity and live content.”

 

What is AMP For Email?

AMP is a framework for creating HTML emails, linked to an AMP specific javascript file. Allowing you to add premade components with your own styling into an email. It needs an additional email MIME type to be sent – more on that later…

To work with AMP, email developers are going to need to spend some time learning the different way to do things – it is essentially more like modern web development. No inline styles, no !important allowed and all CSS in the <head> of the email.

 

What is the support for AMP in email?

Currently there are only a few ESP’s supporting sending AMP emails and only Gmail using webmail supports receiving dynamic emails! This is a relatively new way to create and send emails, so ESP’s companies and email clients may take a while to implement all the updates needed. ESP’s have shared that they are working on adding the ability to send AMP emails and some big email clients have also publicly declared they are working on supporting AMP. For the latest list of ESP’s, email clients and email editors that support AMP – checkout this github page.

 

ESP Support *June 2019

  • Sparkpost
  • Sendgrid (via API – not marketing emails)
  • Mailgun (via API)
  • Amazon SES
  • eSputnik

ESP’s proposing to work on AMP

  • MAPP (Late 2019)
  • Clang (Q3/beginning Q4 2019)
  • Klaviyo (Late 2019)
  • Pure360 (2020)

Email Client Support (June 7th 2019)

  • Gmail – Webmail
  • Email Client Support (Reported Coming Soon)
  • Gmail App
  • Mail.ru
  • Outlook.com
  • Yahoo Mail

Email Editors

  • Taxi for Email
  • Stripo (editor support for basic layout and Carousel – more coming soon)

 

How do you send with AMP4Email?

To send AMP emails you need your ESP to support adding the extra MIME type. Once this is done you can focus on getting your domain ‘whitelisted’ with Gmail – Gmail has a system set up to ensure any added extras above the usual HTML and text emails is only sent from verified domains and trusted senders.

 

Getting Whitelisted

You need to have SPF and DKIM set up for your emails. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). To check if it is all set up, use the Google email validation tool. Lastly ensure you are compliant with the Gmail Bulk Senders Guidelines – low spam score, send regularly etc. Once you are happy they are all set up, using your ESP and sending directly to Gmail (not forwarding) – create an example AMP email and send to [email protected] after sending you need to fill out the registration form for Gmail. Finally – wait for Gmail to get back to you – it took a couple of days for Action Rocket to get a reply. But some have said it can be up to a week.

 

Building AMP HTML Emails

AMP uses different validation rules and has its own limitations and quirks, unfortunately it isn’t as simple as adding some AMP code to a current html email – it will need to be its own version. We will shortly be adding a tutorial on creating AMP emails, including a boilerplate email to start you off. In the meantime, checkout the resources at the end of this post to find other guides – if you want to jump into building, AMP have set up a tutorial on how to build your first amp email.

 

The Pros:

  • More interactivity across clients
  • Some components add interactive modules within clients that previously were not supported
  • Live and dynamic content, without the need for third party tools
  • Components built to render in supporting clients, so easier testing
  • Lighter weight emails (An interactive carousel email we built was half the size and under 50kb)
  • Closer to modern web development techniques
  • Javascript like development options available in email.

 

The cons:

  • You still need to create an HTML and text email, adding another email will increase design and build time – with the need to design an alternate version for AMP if the features are not supported elsewhere.
  • Need ESP and email client support.
  • Longer design and build time will add to the cost of email production.
  • Live content and Dynamic content will need to have backend support from a web team Along with fallbacks, plus support for website redirects and expiration of offers and feeds.
  • In-house training and support for a new language and tool.

 

When?

Gmail has announced that it will make interactive emails live for Gsuite users on 2nd July 2019 and with support already in gmail webmail and app support coming soon, most Gmail users will start to see AMP emails in their inbox by the end of the year – if you use google docs, sheets or slides, I have seen a couple of AMP emails letting me reply to comments and see changes! With more ESP’s and clients proposing to support AMP by the end of 2020 – it would seem that it would be a good idea to start thinking about how AMP could add to your current email program.

 

“As with all interactive emails – don’t do it just because it is there – use it to solve a problem or to enhance your users experience.”

 

The code and solutions team at Action Rocket have been at the forefront of AMP 4 Email since becoming a Google Partner early in 2019. We authored the guide to start building AMP emails for leading Email Testing Brand – Email on Acid. We have been producing test AMP emails and developing techniques to create new designs and builds since its launch – so we are ready to talk about using it in your email program, how it can improve your user experience and how you can work to implement it as soon as you are ready!

Jay Oram – @emailjay_
Coder @ Action Rocket

 

Resources

 

AMP tools