How to build emails people actually want to open — with examples, ideas, and tricks that actually work.
Ready to turn your next email campaign into an addictive game? With gamified email design, you can transform how your brand connects with audiences — not just through eye-catching visuals but by making every email feel like a mini adventure.
For freelancers and creatives working in agencies or video production companies, this presents a tantalizing opportunity: imagine crafting interactive emails with scratch cards, quizzes, or competitions that feel more like micro-games than mundane marketing messages. In this article, you’ll discover what interactive email design actually is, why games hook us so hard, the different types you can play with, and how to tackle those pesky technical challenges.
What email gamification is all about
Gamification takes the fun bits from games (think challenges, goals, and sweet rewards) and drops them into non-game stuff — like your marketing newsletters — to get people actually excited about opening emails.
So what turns a regular email into a game? Here’s your toolkit:
- Goal: Clear objectives that players need to nail.
- Achievements: When someone wins, celebrate it! Could be loyalty points, badges, or that discount they’ve been eyeing.
- Rules: Each gamified email should be equipped with clear guidelines explaining how a player can beat a game.
- Challenge: Your email game should be achievable, yet with a bit of challenge to ignite motivation.
- Heroes: A good game element to give players information about their progress. You can use the same characters across different campaigns for brand storytelling to create an emotional connection and recognition.
- Luck: Random opportunities that delight players with unexpected rewards (e.g., a spin-the-wheel game embedded in a promotional email. When recipients click the wheel, it spins to reveal a random reward).
- Chance: A surprising game result when a player wins or loses. For example, the email offers players the chance to “Pick a loot box,” and each box leads to various results: One might reveal free shipping, another a discount, and another… nothing at all.
- Leaderboards: Nothing like healthy competition to get people refreshing their inbox.
- Storytelling: Narrative elements like choices leading to different outcomes help you place players at the center of the email game and make them feel like the main hero. For instance, your email game might present the following scenario: “You’re launching a new brand — what’s your first move?” Recipients click through options like “Build a mood board” or “Start with a logo,” with each choice leading to different outcomes and tips, unfolding a mini-narrative.
- Time limits: FOMO is real. Countdown timers add that perfect amount of pressure.
- Room for growth: Give players chances to level up their skills and learn something new.
Why games hook us so hard: The psychology behind email interactivity
Besides being a great method for entertaining recipients, the effectiveness of email marketing gamification is rooted in human psychology. When designed right, gamified emails evoke positive emotions and encourage productive behaviors.
So, what do you need to know to come up with a successful gamified email design besides the tech aspects of email games? Here are the feelings and actions that email interactivity should evoke:
- Desire for achievement: Completing a game hits the same pleasure centers as crossing off a to-do list item. This drive to collect badges, unlock rewards, and see progress bars fill up? That’s what keeps players coming back.
- Excitement and mystery: Hidden rewards, spinning wheels, clickable puzzles — these unexpected elements create that “what’s behind door number three?” anticipation that keeps people engaged way longer than they planned.
- Feeling of connection: Playing alongside hundreds of other players (visible through leaderboards or shared outcomes) creates real community vibes. Suddenly you’re not just another email address — you’re part of something bigger.
Email games: Pick your fighter
Interactive email design includes many game types, depending on your goals, the recipients, and the brand experience you want to offer. Let’s explore six core categories of gamified experiences that creatives can use to inspire dynamic, engaging emails.
Luck and chance games
Games like scratch cards, loot boxes, roll the dice, and spin the wheel are perfect if you need to offer surprising outcomes that create suspense and anticipation. These games don’t require much effort from players and offer instant rewards, leading to quick and engaging interactions.
Puzzle games
These brain-teasers demand more from players but deliver bigger engagement payoffs. Think crosswords, memory games, mix-and-match challenges, or spot-the-difference puzzles. Perfect for revealing new products or unlocking exclusive discounts — make ’em work for it.
Educational games
Fun fact: challenging games boost learners’ performance by 89.45%. If you’re worried games don’t align with your brand’s serious image, educational games let you flex your authority while keeping things playful. Quiz players about products, drop knowledge bombs through trivia, or gamify those “did you know?” moments.
Competition games
For the competitive spirits who live to crush their rivals. Weekly contests with real-time leaderboards tap into that primal need to win. Works for everything from “battle for your discount” promos to holiday campaigns that need extra sparkle.
Discovery games
Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Escape rooms, treasure hunts, and prediction games turn complex info into an adventure. For example, an interactive “treasure hunt” email from a design agency encourages players to click around to find hidden icons within a digital landscape. Each icon reveals a portfolio piece, turning exploration into engagement.
Interactive feedback
Although it’s not email gamification per se, interactive feedback like star ratings or satisfaction scales is often associated with interactive email experiences and allows recipients to share their opinions directly in the email without leaving their inboxes. This makes data collection quick and effortless, encouraging spontaneous participation.
Interactive email design challenges (and how to beat them)
While gamified emails open creative doors, they also come with technical headaches. Here’s how to navigate the obstacles and deliver experiences that work everywhere.
Challenge: Building games requires coding chops
Gamified emails are traditionally associated with the developer’s coding expertise, making such a task costly and time-consuming, especially when combining different formats like AMP, HTML5, and CSS3. This is one of the most common blockers for creatives and small teams who don’t have developers on hand.
AMP components (like amp-carousel, amp-selector, amp-bind) enable real-time interactions in emails, but work in a limited number of email clients (mainly Gmail and Yahoo Mail). HTML5 & CSS3 support basic interactivity through checkboxes and the :checked selector — but even this approach isn’t supported across platforms.
Solution: Embrace no-code email builders with AMP and HTML gamification modules. Pre-built templates let you stay on-brand while using ready-made mechanics (questionnaires, scratch cards, NPS surveys) — no coding required. If all else fails, link to a web version that looks and feels like the email game.
Challenge: Gamified emails eat time and budget
Even with no-code tools and pre-built game mechanics, email interactivity takes more time and resources than a standard email. You still need to create the visuals and logic, test across multiple email clients, and work on smart fallbacks for interactive emails. And the more time spent on development, the higher the expenses, which not everyone can afford.
Solution: You can reduce expenses and save time on gamified email design by repurposing game mechanics you already used (like a poll or image quiz) while changing only the rules, visuals, or rewards. It won’t compromise creativity, as with a new design and goals, your game will feel new. Modular email design (creating emails from a variety of ready-made elements like headers, footers, banners, etc.) and pre-built interactive blocks also speed up the email creation process and ensure consistency.
Some ESPs don’t support interactive email design
Even the most well-designed game will be useless if some of your recipients can’t actually play it because your chosen ESP doesn’t support AMP as well as HTML5 and CSS3. When an ESP doesn’t support AMP or doesn’t render advanced CSS-based elements correctly, the recipient then sees fallback content that may be static (even if they use email clients that support AMP).
Solution: Design gamified emails with AMP as well as HTML5 and CSS3 in mind:
- AMP version for clients that support it (Gmail, Yahoo, and FairEmail).
- Interactive fallback for email clients that support HTML5 and CSS3 (Apple Mail and Samsung Email).
- Web version for email clients that don’t support HTML5 and CSS3 (some Outlook apps).
Turn boring emails into unforgettable experiences
Gamified email design transforms mundane messages into memorable moments. Whether it’s puzzles, competitions, or simple feedback forms, these emails tap into our desire for achievement, mystery, and connection. With no-code builders and smart fallbacks, you can ship interactive experiences faster than ever — reaching every inbox with games people actually want to play. Time to turn those forgettable newsletters into the highlight of someone’s day.
Feature image via Envato ImageGen
