Cybuy, New York, has landed 24/7 Media as the first major client of its transaction-enabled e-mail, a recently debuted service that seeks to marry online impulse sales with e-mail marketing.
Cybuy's transactional e-mail service allows e-mail recipients to purchase products promoted in the message without being whisked away to a Web site. By clicking on a link in the e-mail, a small window pops up on the user's desktop. The entire transaction takes place within that window, which closes after the purchase is made.
24/7 Media said it plans to offer Cybuy's e-mail technology to clients for use in their e-mail marketing campaigns. Cybuy announced the partnership last week.
“Transaction-enabled e-mail has been a long-anticipated technology in the online marketing world,” said James Green, president of 24/7 Media's Technology Solutions group. “And with this breakthrough, we expect to see retailers demanding that their e-mail marketing campaigns be transaction-enabled.”
Green said he expected online marketers to test the service as they begin to roll out their holiday campaigns.
“Most e-mails link you to a Web site, and then you have to go through the full shopping experience to purchase a product,” Cybuy President Sandra Robinson said in a previous interview with iMarketing News. “Depending on the Web site, it can be very slow and cumbersome. Our focus is giving retailers easy sales solutions and consumers a one-page ordering process.”
For Cybuy, which introduced the e-mail service only three months ago, the partnership with 24/7 is appealing for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, it promotes Cybuy's transactional ads in front of an impressive roster of clients. 24/7 Media's 24/7 Mail division manages 20 million e-mail addresses and includes high-profile clients such as Citigroup, Dell Computer Corp. and Columbia House.
Secondly, the deal places the Cybuy ads on a larger menu of 24/7 services, which include list acquisition and hygiene, Web-based reporting and rich media formats. 24/7 also recently acquired Exactis.com, Denver, the e-mail marketing services firm.
“We're delighted to be working with 24/7 Media, an industry leader,” Robinson said in a statement announcing the deal. She also touted the advantage of combining Cybuy's technology with 24/7 Media's suite of e-mail marketing solutions.
E-mail is not the only platform that Cybuy, a division of international banker NatWest, is utilizing. It also has developed transaction-enabling technology for interactive television, Web sites, online catalogs and banner ads.
Cybuy's banner ads have been in use since the latter part of last year, and its e-mails debuted in June. The company's next focus will be on gaining an early presence in the growing interactive television industry.
