An Increase in Email Conversion with Schema.org Code

Doesn’t it sound good when you provide call-to-actions in your marketing emails, and readers can click those actions actually without opening your email!

Subject line matters a lot when we talk about open rates - When Mailigen, email marketing services provider recommends testing subject lines regularly to pick-up the best one with subject line advisor test, I think it makes sense to put extra efforts to add call-to-actions in your email marketing plan.

If you use Gmail account, you have probably received some of the emails that look different from the rest with a call to action appearing within the subject line itself.

Adding Schema.org markup increases user engagement with call-to-actions in emails.

About Schema.org

It is collaboration between Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex letting webmasters use micro-data in HTML coding to look it clear to machines what a particular page is all about!

The purpose of using email markup is to enable recipients to take actions over TO-DOs as easily and quickly as possible. As per recommendations at Developer resources from Google, you can markup emails which have schema vocabularies such as:

• Events
• Go-to-Actions and
• Highlighted Information, etc.

With the new initiative offered by Gmail (only) at this time that they are now supporting Schema.org code with-in mails. For marketers, it means that your users can skip the process involving clicking, opening and reading the mail and directly go to the desired action.

One Click Actions:

These are designed to enable recipients to take a particular action with one single click without leaving their Inbox.  Following are the types of these actions:

Confirmation Actions: It can be used to ask your users to go with confirmation for a meeting, appointment, subscription or following a campaign etc.

Saving Actions: It can be used to ask users to save a sort of information in their accounts like a Deal, Coupon, product etc.

Code Example:

<span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/EmailMessage">

  <span itemprop="description" content="We need to confirm your email address."></span>

  <span itemprop="action" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ConfirmAction">

    <meta itemprop="name" content="Confirm Subscription">

    <span itemprop="handler" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/HttpActionHandler">

      <meta itemprop="url" content="https://[CONFIRMATION_URL]">

      <link itemprop="method" href="http://schema.org/HttpRequestMethod/POST">

    </span>

  </span>

</span>

RSVP Actions:

These actions are used for sending invitations with RSVP actions. Once being clicked, it shows an invitation card with details and actions.

Code Example:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Event">

  <meta itemprop="name" content="Music Night"/>

  <meta itemprop="startDate" content="2015-05-20 T15:30:00Z"/>

  <meta itemprop="endDate" content="2015-05-20 T16:30:00Z"/>

  <div itemprop="location" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place">

    <div itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">

      <meta itemprop="name" content="Google"/>

      <meta itemprop="streetAddress" content="20A Crown Plaza"/>

      <meta itemprop="addressLocality" content="Jaipur"/>

      <meta itemprop="addressRegion" content="RJ"/>

      <meta itemprop="postalCode" content="302021"/>

      <meta itemprop="addressCountry" content="India"/>

    </div>

  </div>

  <div itemprop="action" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/RsvpAction">

    <div itemprop="handler" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/HttpActionHandler">

      <link itemprop="url" href="http://mysite.com/rsvp?eventId=123&value=yes"/>

    </div>

    <link itemprop="attendance" href="http://schema.org/RsvpAttendance/Yes"/>

  </div>

  <div itemprop="action" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/RsvpAction">

    <div itemprop="handler" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/HttpActionHandler">

      <link itemprop="url" href="http://mysite.com/rsvp?eventId=123&value=no"/>

    </div>

    <link itemprop="attendance" href="http://schema.org/RsvpAttendance/No"/>

  </div>

  <div itemprop="action" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/RsvpAction">

    <div itemprop="handler" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/HttpActionHandler">

      <link itemprop="url" href="http://mysite.com/rsvp?eventId=123&value=maybe"/>

    </div>

    <link itemprop="attendance" href="http://schema.org/RsvpAttendance/Maybe"/>

  </div>

</div>

Review Actions:

Senders can use review actions for sending out emails with Review option which will resulting in showing a card having 5 Start rating system or a comment box allowing user’s review up-to 10000 characters. At present, Gmail enables users to apply review actions integration for following types:

1. Movies
2. Restaurants and
3. Products

Code Example:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/EmailMessage">

  <div itemprop="action" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ReviewAction">

    <div itemprop="review" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Review">

      <div itemprop="itemReviewed" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/FoodEstablishment">

        <meta itemprop="name" content="Indian Spice’s Diner"/>

      </div>

      <div itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating">

        <meta itemprop="bestRating" content="5"/>

        <meta itemprop="worstRating" content="1"/>

      </div>

    </div>

    <div itemprop="handler" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/HttpActionHandler">

      <link itemprop="url" href="http://reviews.com/review?id=123"/>

      <div itemprop="requiredProperty" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Property">

        <meta itemprop="name" content="review.reviewRating.ratingValue"/>

      </div>

      <div itemprop="optionalProperty" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Property">

        <meta itemprop="name" content="review.reviewBody"/>

      </div>

      <link itemprop="method" href="http://schema.org/HttpRequestMethod/POST"/>

    </div>

  </div>

  <meta itemprop="description" content=" Hope you enjoyed your dinner at Indian Spice. Please provide us a feedback!" />

</div>

Go-To Actions:

These actions navigate users to a new page while clicking. Users can interact with these actions multiple times.

Guidelines for Using Schema Code in Emails:

Senders need to register first Google before applying schemas in your emails. Below are some of the quality guidelines as proposed by Gmail:

1. Authenticated emails by DKIM or SPF
2. TLD (Top-level domain) of SPF/DKIM must match the TLD to your email address.
3. Emails from a static email ID
4. Emails must be following Gmail Bulk Sender Quality Guidelines
5. Regular history of sent emails (a high volume of emails) from your domain for a few weeks at minimum
6. Relatively low rate of Spam flagged.

So clearly Gmail Actions can be a strong driving element in future for your email marketing campaign. Though it is yet to come on a big picture and usage but if you implement it now, you will see an extra advantage with your conversions.

I would love to hear your views on it or how to optimize your email marketing campaign with click-worthy events. Please let me know your opinion in comment area below.