TheSkimm Takes Email From Inbox To Calendar

TheSkimm has announced the launch of a new mobile iOS application that automatically adds calendar events on a subscriber’s iPhone.

The popular email newsletter is broadening its business with the release of Skimm Ahead, an iOS mobile application. The mobile app syncs with a user’s iPhone calendar to create an ongoing list of upcoming events, holidays and what The Skimm deems to be culturally relevant announcements.

“Never again will you wonder when Beyonce tickets go on sale, what time the State of the Union is on, or when your favorite show is coming back on Netflix,” the company states on their Web site.

Although TheSkimm’s email newsletter supports advertising, this is the company’s first move toward a paid-subscription business.

Originally launched in 2012 by roommates Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, The Skimm is a daily news digest delivered to readers’ email inboxes every morning. Re-written in easily digestible snapshots of the news, The Skimm now totals more than 3.5 million readers.

The Skimm’s innovative use of email newsletters as a way to drive engagement is now mirrored in the publishing industry as a whole, with a growing number of media outlets turning to email marketing as a way to drive readership, engagement and loyalty.

For example, BuzzFeed now has more than a dozen themed newsletter subscriptions and The New York Times offers more than fifty email newsletters that vary in theme, vertical and delivery frequency.

Some 41% of publishers now use email marketing to generate more than a quarter of their overall revenue, according to a recent study by The Relevancy Group and PostUp.

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