Turn Email Campaigns into Mobile Apps

Email on a mobile device? That seems to be the direction the digital industry is headed thanks to consumers continued adoption of all things smartphone and tablet.

Mobile-optimized email marketing and lead-automation provider TailoredMail released version 6.0 of its solution with an innovative offering dubbed EmailApptimizer which turns emails, landing pages, and microsites into HTML5-based mobile touch-screen applications instantly.

Thanks to its experience with lead automation, TailoredMail has also built in a few additional features which should be appealing to those looking to increase user-engagement with the portion of their audience that relies heavily on mobile devices (more on that below) for their information and communication needs - namely tracking analytics. But where the product really seems to shine is in its conversion of emails to HTML5 apps with features including touch gestures, mobile-aware navigation menus and profile forms, interactive polls, click-to-call integration, and save-to-home functionality.

"It's slick," said Doug Strohm, president of Tudor Games - a leading maker of hands-on sports games. "The first email we send looks great on both desktop PCs and mobile devices. When a customer clicks a link, the newsletter instantly turns into an interactive mobile app full of rich content. Customers engage with it much like any other mobile application they're already familiar with. The tracking and analytics allow us to identify the interests of our customers, and begin great conversational interactions with each subsequent touch."

TailoredMail's focus on mobile is coming at the right time. In its own study of 150 million emails over a 12-month period, emails viewed on a mobile device represented 39 percent of the total - almost double that of a year ago. There are some downsides unfortunately, namely that mobile click-through rates represented only 12 percent of the total - likely because of how emails and other assets (e.g. landing pages) rendered away from the desktop.

"We saw this sea-of-change coming over a year ago, and set out to eliminate this challenge and cost to marketers," said Matt Highsmith, CEO of TailoredMail. "EmailApptimizer automatically detects the mobile device, and instantly turns the email and landing-pages into an interactive touch-screen experience. Mobile campaign deployment is instantaneous, and engagement rates quickly rise."