The Ultimate Guide to Interactive Forms in Email

“Forms in email don’t work.”

“Forms are powered by JavaScript—and that’s not supported in email.”

Have you heard these words before? Us too. Many marketers think that using interactive forms in email simply isn’t possible, but we’re here to bust that myth. The truth is that interactive forms are supported in many popular email clients and can be a powerful tool to make your emails more engaging and increase conversions—if you know how to do it.

Email developer extraordinaire Mark Robbins took a deep-dive into interactive forms in email at Litmus Live 2019—and that inspired our team here at Litmus to experiment with interactive forms as well. In this post, we’ll share the basic principles from Mark’s talk along with additional tips and advice from our own testing so you can make interactive forms come to live in your emails, too.

Ready to dive in? Let’s go!

The power of interactive forms in email

Think about all the times you’re using email to drive your subscriber to a landing page to encourage them to fill out some type of form. What if you were able to skip that step altogether and empower your subscribers to take action right where they are, within your email?

For example, you could…

• Collect product reviews or NPS feedback right within the email
• Run short surveys without having to send your subscribers to a landing page
• Allow your subscribers to update user profiles or email preference without them having to visit their user account settings
• Embed lead generation forms right within your campaigns
• And more!

Presenting a form within the email itself can eliminate the need for a landing page. Every additional step your subscribers have to take to achieve a goal adds friction. Embedding a form within your email can reduce friction, shorten your path to conversion, and ultimately increase conversions.

Email client support for forms in email

One of the biggest reasons why email designers and developers shy away from using interactive forms is because they’re worried that they might not be supported in many email clients. The myth of insufficient support no longer holds true though. In fact, 4 out of the top 5 email clients—Gmail, iOS Mail, Apple Mail, and Yahoo! Mail—support interactive forms, and those account for over 80% of all email opens, according to Litmus’ Email Client Market Share.

Here’s what we found when testing interactive form support across popular email clients:..

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