Gizmoz Inc., a developer of rich media “smart envelope” e-mail technology, today is expected to announce an alliance with online marketing agency i-traffic and will make its gizmo technology available to Bookspan, a direct marketer of book clubs.
The “Great Book Deals” gizmo, developed for Bookspan, which is jointly owned by German media giant Bertelsmann and AOL-Time Warner, contains special membership offers from 17 of Bookspan’s 48 book clubs, including the Book-of-the-Month Club, Quality Paperback Book Club and the Literary Guild. Bookspan plans to use the gizmo as a customer acquisition tool.
A gizmo is a program sent by e-mail or an instant message or viewed on a Web site that contains rich media content — anything from interactive games to video or music — which Gizmoz calls a smart envelope. Every gizmo incorporates a viral feature and can be passed along to others.
According to Yossi Amossy, Gizmoz’s chief operating officer and a co-founder of the New York company, the i-traffic deal is a chance for Gizmoz to get its technology in front of a new audience. Previous clients include Sony and the WB television network.
“The audience of Bookspan is not the same we have worked with in the past,” Amossy said. “Gizmos have an entertainment piece incorporated in it and has a lot of functional value to people who want update information on the book clubs.”
In a recent campaign with the WB Television network, the WB Insider gizmo was sent to the network’s database of more than 1 million e-mail names. The WB said the campaign resulted in a 26 percent click-through rate.
