Converting mobile devices to powerful marketing tools
Corporate email signatures are increasingly used as powerful, low-cost, high return marketing tools by corporates, incorporating not just the sender's name, title and contact details but also images, links, advertising messages, brand campaigns and more.
However, growing use of smart phones and tablets for email correspondence is undermining these branding efforts as they cannot carry this messaging.
That’s because emails sent from the latest mobile devices are generated in Plain Text while email signatures and marketing banners must be composed in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language).
Now Johannesburg-based Software as a Service (SaaS) specialist SYNAQ has developed an easy-to-use solution to this problem for users of its popular, locally developed email software, Pinpoint. Called Pinpoint Branding Text to HTML (T2H), it automatically converts Plain Text emails to HTML.
SYNAQ managing director Yossi Hasson says that the importance of email signatures cannot be underestimated.
“At its most basic, the email signature is a virtual business card or ad that alerts the recipient to special news and enables them to have direct access to the corporate website. However, the incorporation of banners and messaging can make it much more.
“As part of a standard email message, it’s the most effective way of getting business cards and marketing messages to an enormous number of people. If a company has 30 employees, each of whom sends out 15 emails daily, then - assuming 250 business days - that’s 112 500 business cards or ads distributed annually at no cost. For an organisation with 100 employees, that’s 375 000 cards or ads annually.
“No wonder smart marketers work so hard at ensuring that everyone in the organisation uses the same signature format and consistent corporate messaging in their emails,” Hasson adds.
He points out that while desktops and notebooks can be programmed to ensure that all emails are composed in HTML – often a major headache for IT administrators - this is not possible with smart phones and tablets.
The result is that any corporate branding included in Plain Text emails generated by mobile devices or incorrectly programmed PCs is lost. The messages are sent out unbranded and unsigned.
With the new Pinpoint Branding T2H conversion feature, all Plain Text emails sent from mobile devices or PCs are automatically and consistently branded by the Pinpoint Branding service.
“Administrators no longer have to worry about ensuring that all end-users compose their emails in HTML on their PCs. All they have to do to ensure consistent corporate branding with email signatures and email banners across all devices and email clients is to enable the T2H feature in their Pinpoint Branding application,” Hasson adds.
The T2H feature also addresses the problem of email recipients who have set their PCs to receive emails only as Plain Text – and thus don’t see any signature information included in corporate emails.
Pinpoint Branding automatically enables customers to apply a standard text-based signature derived from the HTML signature to the text part of the email.
“The branding may be somewhat diluted, but at least the email is signed and any important contact information can also be included,” Hasson concludes.
About SYNAQ
SYNAQ is a pioneering technology company that leverages off the power of open source software and the cloud to deliver innovative email management services to the corporate market. Established in 2004 and processing over 500 million emails a month, SYNAQ is the leader in open source cloud email management services. SYNAQ is a Dimension Data company.
Tags: email marketing campaigns, marketing tools, Pinpoint Branding, plain text to html conversion