No Web required
New ways of using email are in orderââ,¬"-it's time to introduce the so-called transactive email.
Email has long been a staple of Internet marketing, but with the volume of permission-based commercial email expected to rise to some 226 billion messages by 2003, according to eMarketer, new ways of using it are in order. Enter so-called transactive email. Because it does not require users to visit a Web site, customers can more quickly and easily complete transactions. Radical Communication has developed this new twist on email marketing with its RadicalMail product.
HTML-based messages let a customer make a purchase directly within an email message by simply entering credit card information. The transaction is as secure as one completed on a Web site, since it uses Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, encryption. Even better, the customer can forward the message to friends.
Zagat.com, a publisher of restaurant guides, chose this new technology for its holiday promotion last year. Working with RadicalMail, Bigfoot Interactive used transactive email featuring slick graphics to offer 40 percent off the publisher's ZagatPacks, bundled packs of Zagat guides and maps to multiple cities. The promotion also encouraged recipients to forward the message to three friends. Zagat's conversion rate for this program was five times higher than usual.
Kate Leahy, director of marketing at Bigfoot, says the campaign was successful, but points out a drawback of this method: "Transactive e-mails are cutting-edge. Some customers might not be comfortable with the new technology." But she thinks conversion rates will rise as buyers accept that the method is as secure, and data as private, as it is over the Web.
