• Marketing Land
  • Sections
    • CMO
    • Social
    • SEM
    • SEO
    • Analytics
    • Display
    • Retail
    • MarTech
    • Resources
    • More
    • Home
  • Marketing Land
  • CMO
  • Social
  • SEM
  • SEO
  • Analytics
  • Display
  • Retail
  • MarTech
  • Resources
  • More
  • SUBSCRIBE

Marketing Land

Marketing Land
  • CMO
  • Social
  • SEM
  • SEO
  • Analytics
  • Display
  • Retail
  • MarTech
  • Resources
  • More
  • Home
  • Newsletters
  • Home
Email Marketing

Early AMP for Email lessons: Apple Mail workaround; Approach it like an app

Doodle has been experimenting with AMP-enabled dynamic email for months. Here are 6 tips to getting it right.

Ginny Marvin on March 28, 2019 at 3:19 pm
  • More

AMP for Email, rolling out for Gmail now, has the potential to transform how marketers and product designers think about the inbox. Online scheduling company Doodle is among the early adopters that have been testing the new spec for making emails dynamic since Google unveiled it last year.

Doodle’s AMP for Email recipients can respond to meeting scheduling requests right from their inboxes.

Doodle is using AMP in email to let users respond to meeting scheduling requests without ever having to leave their email.

The team learned a lot during the beta period and has lessons-learned to share. Michael Wuergler, a U.S. developer working in the Doodle Zurich office, discussed with us by phone Thursday the team’s experiences and tips for other marketers looking at using AMP for Email.

Tip #1: Know the difference between AMP and AMP for Email specs. AMP for Email is a subset of AMP. “It can save you a lot of time if you understand the differences ahead of time,” said Wuergler. Not all of the AMP features are available for AMP for Email. It’s easy to search for something and unwittingly end up on the AMP documentation, cautioned Wuergler.

Tip #2: Apple Mail caveat. It’s now safe to send AMP emails to all email clients except Apple Mail, the Doodle team found. But there is a workaround for Apple Mail. To get AMP for Email to work in Apple Mail, you’ll need to reorder the MIME types of email, said Wuergler. The RFC 1341 spec order is plain text, HTML, with any other format listed last. To get AMP for Email to work in Apple Mail, re-order to plain text, AMP, HTML. “It breaks spec, but it’s an unfortunate workaround,” said Wuergler. Otherwise, you’ll get garbled text that is not readable by a human.

Tip #3: AMP.printState() for debugging. If you use AMP.printState() in the developer console, you can see the application state. Wuergler said this is very handy for debugging AMP for Email as well as regular AMP pages.

Tip #4: Responsive troubleshooting. There have been improvements to making AMP responsive, said Wuergler, but AMP list components aren’t always great for responsive, so you have to work harder than normal to get a fully responsive design. “They are already experimenting with fixes and responding to the collective voices in the community,” Wuergler said. “We found a way to make it work, but the trade-offs were significant after we saw limitations. We needed to make interesting twists and turns to make the design work.”

Tip #5: Back-end action tracking. You can still use tracking pixels to see whether the HTML or AMP versions were delivered to users, yet it’s not possible to track front-end behaviors on an AMP email as you could on a web page. However, Wuergler said, “With AMP, you’re making a lot of server requests, so you can still track behavior. You’re just doing it through endpoints on the server side.” The Doodle team found that a back-end tracking solution (build your own or use an existing API product, he advised) was simple and uncomplicated to execute.

Tip #6: Approach it like app development. Wuergler suggests approaching AMP email like a mini web app. “All of that tooling is available. You benefit from having the mindset of an app developer and then bringing that to the inbox.” You’ll also be at an advantage if your team already has experience with AMP. “If you know AMP, you know AMP for Email,” said Wuergler. “You can take all of your AMP-related knowledge and apply it to email. You just need to be aware of the limitations in the email spec.”

In general, Wuergler said, the experience for marketers and development teams getting going with AMP for Email now will be a lot more straightforward. Though there will certainly be new ground being broken as more businesses start experimenting and trying new things with it.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.



About The Author

Ginny Marvin
Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

Related Topics

Channel: Email MarketingEmail MarketingGoogle: Gmail

We're listening.

Have something to say about this article? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or our LinkedIn Group.

Get the daily newsletter digital marketers rely on.

Processing...Please wait.

See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS

Next Event: Sept. 14-15, 2021

Available On-Demand: March 2021

Available On-Demand: October 2020

×

Attend MarTech - Click Here


Learn More About Our MarTech Events

Available On-Demand: SMX Create

May 18-19, 2021: SMX London

June 8-9, 2021: SMX Paris

June 15-16, 2021: SMX Advanced

June 21-22, 2021: SMX Advanced Europe

August 17, 2021: SMX Convert

November 9-10, 2021: SMX Next

December 14, 2021: SMX Code

Available On-Demand: SMX

Available On-Demand: SMX Report

×


Learn More About Our SMX Events

White Papers

  • Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms
  • Selecting a Customer Data Platform For Your Organization: The 2020 Gartner Market Guide
  • The Complete Guide to Web Core Vitals
  • The New Era of Automation in SEO
  • Nielsen Annual Marketing Report: Era of Adaptation
See More Whitepapers

Webinars

  • Drive Customer Engagement with the Power of Personalization
  • 7 Use Cases That Prove Why You Should Implement DAM
  • Accelerate Your SEO & Content Marketing Program with 4 Key Milestones
See More Webinars

Research Reports

  • Local Marketing Solutions for Multi-Location Businesses
  • Enterprise Digital Asset Management Platforms
  • Identity Resolution Platforms
  • Customer Data Platforms
  • B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
  • Call Analytics Platforms
See More Research

Attend SMX For Only $199

h
Receive daily marketing news & analysis.

Channels

  • MarTech
  • CMO
  • Social
  • SEM
  • SEO
  • Mobile
  • Analytics
  • Retail
  • Display

Our Events

  • MarTech
  • SMX

Resources

  • White Papers
  • Research
  • Webinars

About

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • RSS
  • Youtube

© 2021 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.