The fundamental function of any marketing campaign is to get your prospects out of their zone and into yours.

That’s the first objective brick-&-mortar stores expect their personnel to accomplish:

• Strike up a conversation,
• Assess the reason for a person’s visit, and
• Become the source for a solution.

E-commerce entrepreneurs clearly need to be more proactive with this process. As in every step of the way.

That’s why it’s strongly advisable that even e-mail messages encourage readers to take action right then and there. They must be compelled to do something beyond viewing text.

That’s the purpose of interactive content.

Notice Audrey mentioned customer personas.

That’s an exercise you’ve absolutely gotta do. You can’t effectively engage if you don’t have a solid idea of who your prospect is.

Here’s an easy way to do it, compliments of Hubspot:

Now, that’s an extremely useful piece of interactive content!

Perhaps an element such as that is a bit out of your range right now, but it serves as a classic example of involving the reader.

And here are a few convincing facts, according to the Content Marketing Institute:

• Two in three (66%) agree that audience engagement has increased since they started using interactive content tactics;
• Four in five (79%) content marketers agree that combining traditional content marketing tactics with interactive content enhances retention of our message; and
• Two in three (67%) agree that interactive content provides valuable ways to repurpose passive content.

Here are interactive content suggestions that have proven effective at various stages of the buying cycle:

All major autoresponders have features that allow you to include pdf downloads, for example, with your messages.

Even if you choose a simple technique like deploying squeeze pages to introduce presentations — collecting names and e-mail addresses in the process — you’re on the way to making interactive content work for you.