By Ken Liebeskind
Cybuy, a New York firm that is a subsidiary of NatWest, has announced that it will add an embedded order form to its transactional email product, which will enable consumers to
purchase from an email without clicking to another page.
"There's no extra step so it's more convenient for the consumer," says Dominic DiMascia, Cybuy's CEO. "It lowers the barriers to purchase by
shortening the distance between the offer and the order and allowing the retailer to bring the store to the consumer."
Customers have ordered from Cybuy by clicking a button that opened a daughter
window over the email and filling out the information to complete the transaction. "This provides a more convenient and faster means to place orders," DiMascia says.
The embedded order form may be a
novelty for transactional email suppliers, but it is already being offered by Radical Communication (RC), the Radical mail company in Marina del Rey, CA that launched a streaming email product late
last year with embedded order form capabilities. Zagat Survey, the New York restaurant guide publisher, was the first company to use it (MediaPost, Jan. 29).
The difference between Cybuy's and RC's
email products is that Cybuy's is HTML-based and RC's is a streaming rich media product. DiMascia says Cybuy can also stream email, but "we don't design or produce the rich email, we commerce-enable
it."
The benefit to HTML-based email is that everyone can receive it while Radical mail can only be seen by computers linked to the Internet that can read Javascript and Java. Only 45 to 50% of
computer users can read Radical mail, with text messages sent to those who can't, according to Jay Stevens, RC's director of marketing.
Both companies say their email authorizes credit card
transactions within the body of the email without going to a separate browser, which is an important step in speeding up the transaction.
Cybuy will distribute its embedded order form email through
six resellers. The resellers are email marketing companies that run email programs for their clients with technology from Cybuy and other companies.
Mike Kyosaki, senior VP of E2 Communications, a
Dallas reseller, says, "as marketing moves to more advanced techniques, Cybuy comes into play with new functions like embedded order forms." He says retailers will be the biggest users, who will be
able to sell individual products, instead of offering their entire product line.
Resellers pay Cybuy for the embedded order form technology and upsell it to their clients. DiMascia says companies
pay from $10 to $40 per thousand names mailed, depending on the kind of campaign they run.
In the past, email campaigns have sometimes been measured by the click through rate, which will be
impossible with the embedded order form since there are no clicks. DiMascia says open and buy through rates will be used, which determine how many people open the email and purchase the
products.
- Ken Liebeskind may be reach