Is B&Q's kinetic campaign a glimpse into email marketing's future?

With so many brands now turning to marketing automation to enhance their campaigns, is it time to reimagine the good ol' fashioned email and its relative lack of interaction?

B&Q thinks so – the UK’s biggest DIY chain has announced a partnership with Oracle to run ‘kinetic’ email campaigns, which it claims will bring a new level of immersive, content-centric service to its email subscribers.

Kinetic emails are designed with mobile users in mind; allowing smartphone and tablet users to view sliding panels much in the way bespoke mobile websites and apps allow the same functionality – without any need to scroll down a page.

The emails are said to allow for more image-based content, and offer a simple yet engaging alternative to the current static email option.

Combined with personalised content, B&Q believe ‘kinetic’ emails could potentially transform the B2C email experience:

“We are offering our customers something they have not been able to do before – access this level of information within the email template, without being directed away to the website,” says Christina Heaver, Email Planner, B&Q.

“We already see high open rates for our emails, but we are looking to increase the click-through rate for our growing mobile audience, and to increase email engagement. The benefit of this would be twofold: we can understand much more what information our customer base wants by testing the engagement levels, and in return we can send our customers relevant content in a design which is more visually creative and compelling." 

According to the most recent statistics for UK businesses, the average open rate for an email campaign currently stands at around 22.87%, while the average click-through rate hovers around the 3.25% mark. Clearly a new approach is needed for marketers to gain any prolonged success with the channel, especially through mobile devices where average click-through rates are at their lowest.  

Mobile devices currently account for over 50% of the open rate for B&Q’s email campaigns, and the retailer is focusing much of its attention on driving future marketing campaigns through this channel.