• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, October 5, 2015

Email marketing service firm Movable Ink and visual commerce platform Curalate announced a partnership to enable email marketers to insert social images into email campaigns in an effort to increase engagement and performance.

Movable Ink allows brands to market one-to-one with real-time contextual content and follow consumers across devices and mind-sets. The company counts The Wall Street Journal, eBay, Finish Line and Saks Fifth Avenue among its clients.

Curalate enables brands to connect editorial-style visual content to commerce, allowing pictures of products to link directly to a path to purchase.

“Today’s consumers don’t want to be marketed to; they want to be engaged with authentic experiences that resonate on a personal level,” states Vivek Sharma, CEO of Movable Ink.

According to a report issued by Curalate and Movable Ink in September, 76% of emails have some kind of social media button, but only 14%contain social images.

The reason that so many marketers don't include images from social accounts within email is for technical issues, the report stated. In fact, 52% of the marketers surveyed said "different databases and systems" made adding social images to emails challenging and 52% of respondents said analytics and data collection were the hurdle.

One fitness retailer who works with both Curalate and Movable Ink reportedly saw a seven-fold lift in on-site engagement 24 hours after featuring editorial-style images from Instagram within an email.

Curalate recently announced a partnership with eBay Enterprise to drive sales on over 100,000 blogs and other content publishers. Other clients include  Urban Outfitters, Gap, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Martha Stewart Living, Better Homes and Gardens and Buzzfeed.