One of the most closely watched innovations in the email space is slowly starting to make its way into the outside world.

Support for AMP for Email—a Google-developed technology that aims to bring interactivity to a medium known to be somewhat creaky—is slowly rolling out into marketing tools, including the platforms MessageGears, SparkPost, and Braze. While AMP for Email launched in March and was announced a year earlier, its use in marketing platforms required development time.

A number of big companies are testing the technology, including Pinterest and Oracle. At an event hosted by the mail platform SparkPost this week, developers described  steps they have already taken to add interactive content and real-time information to their messages. Their efforts to integrate features like quizzes have helped to improve clickthrough rates for companies like LendingTree.

Marketing consultant Dennis Shiao, who said he had been using email since “before HTML was invented,” noted in a CMS Wire recap of the event that AMP for Email appears to be the first step toward the future of digital messaging. But the challenge will be ensuring that everyone takes the next step forward.

“The existing providers that support AMP for Email cover a good portion of the market, but we need to see more come on board,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for advancements in email technology since I graduated from college. Perhaps they’ve finally arrived.”

Check out our piece on AMP for Email from earlier this year for more info on what it does.

Wait—What Did I Just Read?

"Can you explain more?"
"Can you break that down?"
"Why did/didn’t you include this voice?"
"Is this biased?"https://t.co/RuW2pCCnD0

— Nieman Lab (@NiemanLab) October 31, 2019

Your content strategy is meant to help you share your expertise with the world—but if the writing isn’t clear, you might leave readers with more questions than answers.

A study from the Center for Media Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin looked at how news organizations could address those questions beforehand. It found that, in particular, many readers are often left with four common questions:

• Can you explain more?
• Can you break that down?
• Why did/didn’t you include this voice?
• Is this biased?

The research also showed that including an explanation of “how we did this reporting” alongside articles improved the perception of a news organization. But even adopting this practice won’t eliminate all questions.

“Not every article is going to be a giant explainer, and even those that are aren’t given a full peruse by news consumers,” Christine Schmidt says on Nieman Lab. “Leftover questions are inevitable, but these are the most common questions that could be easily answered.”

Other Links of Note

Moving away from instructor-led training to an online course? The WBT Systems blog offers tips to guide the change.

There are only so many hours in a day, but time-multiplier strategies can help you make the most of every second, says Fast Company.

If you’re still rockin’ an old iPhone or iPad from six or seven years ago, you need to upgrade soon or you’ll lose some key functionality. The Verge explains what’s up.

(4zevar/iStock/Getty Images Plus)