RE: Streaming Rich Media Email

From: Jay Stevens <jay_at_radicalmail.com>
Date: Thu 28 Jun 2001 13:19:33 -0500

KEITH LACY <keithl_at_vistatec.ie> WROTE:

> I've been reading a lot lately about the benefts and
> potential of rich media email. We've experimented with
> e-mail shots with Flash attachments but in order to make
> it viewable to all recipients you have to export from
> Flash as an .exe and as you are all probably aware many
> people would be reluctant to run an executable from an
> unknown sender.

Streaming rich media email can be a highly effective
marketing vehicle and there are also a number of
rich media email solutions on the market that do not
require the recipient to have plugins installed on
their machine. These solution also serve the message
"inline," meaning that the content is served directly
into the email without attachments.

While the best user experience does require
connectivity when reading the message, most marketers
are already accepting this fact and rapidly moving
to graphically enriched HTML email as well as using
rich content in order to boost effectivity and ROI.
According to Jupiter Media Metrix, HMTL email usually
delivers twice the clickthrough as standard text
messages and relying on our own past experience in the
delivery hundreds of rich media campaigns, we've seen
relevant rich media email campaigns deliver
clickthroughs as high as 60%.

Management of client bandwidth is also an important
issue and a reason why many of the most sophisticated
streaming rich media email solutions incorporate a
bandwith test into their delivery, automatically giving
the user the best possible experience their connection
affords at the time the message is opened, 2-3
frames/second for the 28.8 user and 15 frames/second
of full motion video for the broadband user. An
interesting note, however, is that of the tens of
millions of RadicalMails delivered in the last year,
40% of those that were opened viewed the message in
a broadband environment, a sign that most users are
viewing their email at work on persistent connections
and a definite critical mass of potential recipients
for your rich media email.

Jay Stevens
Director of Marketing
Radical Communication
4086 Glencoe Avenue
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
jay_at_radicalmail.com <mailto:jay_at_radicalmail.com>
Phone 310.578.0208



Received on Thu Jun 28 2001 - 13:19:33 CDT