What Is Dynamic Email and Why Does It Need To Be a Part of Your Email Marketing Strategy?

I always wonder how people manage to maintain clutter-free inboxes and diligently sift through each email they receive every day.

While it is a good practice to do so, in  2023 – the number of emails to be sent and received per day during the year is forecasted to reach 347.30 billion worldwide. 

Not all emails actually get opened. However, the use of dynamic emails can significantly improve your chances of having your emails noticed and opened.

Being a marketer, making sure your email stands out can be a difficult task. But if you send dynamic emails to your subscribers, you can not only create a more personalized experience for your subscribers but also expect an increase in your open rates and sales!

Keep reading to learn what is a dynamic email and how you can create one.

Table of Contents

• What Is Dynamic Email?

• How Dynamic Email Works

• Benefits of Dynamic Email

• Use Cases of Dynamic Email

• Implementing Dynamic Email

• Dynamic Email Security and Privacy Considerations

• Future Trends in Dynamic Email

• Tips for Creating Effective Dynamic Emails

• Dynamic Emails: Closing Thoughts

What Is Dynamic Email?

Dynamic email stands out as a powerful tool that marketers wield to tailor their messages to diverse audience groups. 

At its core, dynamic email involves the art of personalization, where the content within an email can change dynamically based on the data and insights you gather about your subscribers. This information may encompass details such as age, location, gender, or other demographics.

So if you have an audience of 100k and you aim to connect with each one of them, you can enhance the personalization of your content by leveraging the insights you possess about your subscribers.

What does dynamic mean in an email?

Dynamic email content is any personalized part of a mass message that changes based on user behavior or data you have about your subscribers.

For example, instead of sending the same email to every person in your contact list, dynamic emails involve sending personalized emails to people. You can personalize sections such as text. They can segment consumers based on age, location, and gender.

What is the difference between static and dynamic email?

Static emails include the same set of product recommendations for all customers. Static elements in an email remain motionless.

Dynamic emails include personalized parts of an email for different audience groups. Dynamic elements in an email move within the email. These elements can include GIFs, product carousels, videos, and game-like experiences.

Dynamic emails can help you display personalized parts of an email based on data they have about their customers. For example, they can segment consumers based on age, location, and gender.

What are dynamic emails in Gmail?

Dynamic emails represent a Gmail feature enabling users to perform tasks directly within the email they're viewing, eliminating the need to navigate to external pages. These emails are constructed based on AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) standards.

With dynamic emails, users can receive real-time updates within the email, avoiding the requirement to manually refresh or visit external web pages. The content embedded within the email automatically adjusts and updates itself.

These emails empower users to engage with the email in a manner akin to interacting with a website. For instance, users can:

• RSVP to an event invitation

• Participate in discussions within a Google Doc

• Complete a survey or questionnaire

• Explore a product catalog, all without leaving the email interface

How Dynamic Email Works

Dynamic email, at its core, is all about crafting tailored messages that resonate with individuals on a personal level. But how does this personalization magic happen within an email?

Dynamic email leverages data-driven insights about subscribers, such as their preferences, behaviors, demographics, or real-time interactions. When a dynamic email is opened, it acts as a canvas that can adapt in response to various triggers. 

For instance, it can change content based on whether you're a loyal customer or a first-time visitor, your location, or even the weather in your area. This real-time adaptability is achieved through innovative technologies like AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and HTML, allowing for seamless content updates.

Once you design a standard version of your email as a template, you'll be required to categorize your audience into distinct groups, based on criteria like demographics (e.g., age, gender, language) or behavior (e.g., purchase history). This segmentation lays the foundation for crafting customized email variations for each group, forming the core of your dynamic email content strategy.

Once your segments are established, the next step is to integrate dynamic content into your emails through beehiiv. This process entails linking data points from your customer profiles and aligning them with the designated placeholders within your template. 

Once this is done, beehiiv will automatically retrieve the information for each recipient and insert it into the designated areas as soon as they open the email.

Read more about dynamic emails here.

Benefits of Dynamic Email

You can create different templates when you are beginning to grow your email list to target specific segments of your audience, but this is not doable when you want to personalize your emails at scale.

The benefits of dynamic email are manifold:

1. Enhanced Engagement: Personalization ensures that recipients find your emails relevant, which will keep them engaged and boost your open rates while building a stronger bond.

2. Real-time Updates: Dynamic content can be refreshed in real-time, ensuring that the information remains current and up-to-date.

3. Time Efficiency: In a business context, dynamic emails enable tasks like collaboration and project management right from the inbox, saving you valuable time.

Use Cases of Dynamic Email

An example of businesses using dynamic email as a part of their marketing strategy is displaying different products based on each subscriber's previous purchasing history. Dynamic email finds application across various domains:

1. E-commerce: Display real-time product recommendations, pricing, and stock availability based on an individual’s browsing history and purchase behavior.

2. Event Management: Allow recipients to RSVP, access event details, and add calendar reminders directly from the email.

3. Customer Support: Enable customers to submit support tickets, track orders, or schedule appointments without leaving their inbox.

4. Collaboration: For productivity apps, users can comment on documents, make edits, or collaborate on projects directly within the email.

Implementing Dynamic Email

Implementing dynamic email requires adherence to email client-specific guidelines such as AMP for Email or Actionable Messages. These guidelines ensure that dynamic content is fetched seamlessly and displayed correctly. Dynamic email creation involves coding emails in a way that allows for dynamic content retrieval.

To implement dynamic email content, you need to:

• Collect your subscribers’ data

• Choose where to display dynamic content in a template

• Let beehiiv handle the rest for you.

You can use variables in your mailing list to group people based on common characteristics like location, gender, or age. For example, you can even show a different CTA based on the device used to view the email. 

Dynamic Email Security and Privacy Considerations

As with any technological advancement, security and privacy are paramount. You need to ensure that dynamic content is secure and devoid of malicious elements. Respecting user privacy preferences is essential, you should offer options for users to control the level of interactivity in their emails.

Fields Subject to Compliance Rules: Content compliance rules are always applied to specific email fields, including "To," "Cc," "Bcc," "From," and "Subject."

Changing Message Content: As dynamic email content can change over time, the impact of a compliance rule on a dynamic message may also change. These rules are enforced only during the message's delivery phase and do not continue to affect the message after it has reached the recipient's inbox.

Consider the scenario where Google Docs sends a comment notification email. Compliance rules are applied during the delivery of this message. If the message passes the compliance rules, it is successfully delivered to the user's inbox.

When responses are added to comments within the Doc, the content in the notification email automatically updates with these new responses. This update takes place while the message resides in a user’s inbox. Each time a user opens the notification email, they will see the most recent responses integrated into the message.

Future Trends in Dynamic Email

In 2023, dynamic content is expected to increase as email marketers seek to provide personalized experiences that increase engagement and conversions. Some trends in dynamic email design include:

Gamification: Quizzes and scratch cards in your emails are an example of how gamification can keep an audience engaged.

Dark mode compatibility: A recent study proves that over 80% of users operate their devices in dark mode; and as a member of this preference group, I can attest that certain emails on my phone and laptop do not seamlessly adapt to dark mode, somewhat detracting from the overall user experience.

Mobile-first design: Since most users access email on mobile devices, having a responsive email design can make a lot of difference to user experience and engagement.

Large product photos: Designers are favoring large product photos that appear to float in mid-air. These photos can give a sense of 3D realism; and as we move to a VR and AR world, this can be a small part of the big picture.

Hyper-personalized emails: 71% of subscribers decide whether to engage with an email based on the level of personalization offered. Creating personalized experiences is a win-win.

Behavioral triggers: For example, automated emails can be triggered by specific actions, such as abandoned carts, website visits, or past purchases.

Tips for Creating Effective Dynamic Emails

Creating dynamic emails that strike a chord with recipients requires careful planning:

Subject lines: A small part that plays a big role in your emails is your subject line. Keeping it personalized and concise can be a great step to get people to open your emails.

Personalization: Use recipient data to tailor content, making it more relevant and engaging. Over time you will know exactly what your audience likes and dislikes and how you can cater to their choices.

Mobile optimization: Ensure that dynamic emails work seamlessly on mobile devices, catering to a mobile-centric audience.

Extensive testing: Test your dynamic emails across various email clients to ensure compatibility and a seamless user experience. Test, iterate, repeat. 

Use call to action: Your CTA can direct people to click on certain areas of your email, such as subscribe buttons or links to purchase. You can use buttons, icons or images that draw attention to your CTA, contrasts, colors and size can help you make it pop. 

Dynamic Emails: Closing Thoughts

Building a dynamic email template, segmenting, and using elements like quizzes can be the first few steps you can take to optimize your emails for your subscribers.

Using a platform like beehiiv to build your email list can not only help you keep track of your insights but also segment your list and build interactive emails.

You can start today for free or choose the grow/scale/enterprise plan based on your email size and needs!

Happy emailing 👋

Why Trust Me: I have been a writer for 6 years and part of the beehiiv content team for 10 months now. This has given me a deep understanding of email marketing and the power of ESPs and automation.