Can I send AMP emails from Outlook?
This article discussed the AMP email integration with Outlook, Outlook.com and other email clients.
The AMP format was introduced by Google in order to provide faster-loading web pages on mobile devices. Basically, AMP is a modified version of HTML and it is currently widely used by web sites. Google is also trying to bring this format to emails as it would offer more flexibility to the email content, especially to marketing oriented emails. AMP emails allow marketers to add dynamic components to emails, such as registration forms, product carousels, polls etc. The AMP email format allows the reader to interact with these email components without leaving the email.
In order to send an AMP email, you would need:
Moreover, the person receiving your AMP email must also use an email client capable to render AMP content. Otherwise, your email content will fallback and render the regular HTML or plain text email content versions.
So the setup is quite tricky, as it requires AMP email capabilities for all parties involved: the sender must have an AMP-enabled email editor, the email service provider must know how to transport AMP emails and the person receiving the email must use an email client capable to render AMP emails.
Where does Outlook stand with AMP?
Microsoft is the historic rival of Google and the AMP format is one of Google’s babies, so you would not expect Microsoft to jump in and help Google spread the AMP format for emails. So it’s maybe surprising that Microsoft added support for viewing AMP emails on Outlook.com. However, the Outlook.com AMP support refers strictly to viewing these emails – you can not compose AMP emails on Outlook.com.
But Outlook.com represents only about 1% of the email market share, 10 times less than its bigger brother, Microsoft Office Outlook. Microsoft didn’t announce any plans to add AMP support on Outlook and it is highly likely not to add such support in the foreseeable future.
Microsoft Outlook relies on Office components (especially Word and Internet Explorer) to compose and render emails, thus implementing AMP emails in Outlook would require Microsoft to rewrite the way Outlook deals with emails.
Should you use AMP emails?
When you compose an email, you can create the content for all 3 MIME types (email content standards): plain text, HTML and AMP. Your email client should know which content to load & view, depending on its rendering capabilities and your settings. Currently, the email client market is dominated by 3 email applications: Gmail (~30%), Apple iPhone (~30%) and Microsoft Outlook (~10%). In total they share about 80% of the market, combined. Among these 3 email clients, only Gmail supports the AMP email format.
So, if you send an AMP email, only about 30% of your recipients will be able to view the AMP email content. It’s only up to you to decide if it’s worth the effort or not. Here are some useful tools, if you decide give AMP emails a try:
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