The Independent - 3 March 2004

 

Wilson Owen 

 

It’s the answer to a marketer’s dream: knowing who read your email and if it was passed on.  Imagine knowing if the recipient reacted by clicking through to your website.

 

An Auckland based software development company launched a new product into the market which does all these things. 

 

It transforms email from a brand less piece of data into a powerful corporate weapon.

Calcium, which was funded by New Zealand’s leading angel capital company Sparkbox, developed mailPrimer over the past 18 months.

 

After trials with a small group of companies, it effectively demonstrated the potential to turn nameless email into a powerful branding and marketing tool.

 

MailPrimer now marketed to New Zealand companies automatically places email into customised templates carrying the company’s brand and often ignored elements, such as disclaimers.

 

Each company using the system can tailor templates to a sender’s profile or the needs of a particular department. 

 

The product enables senders to track email and answers the questions: Was it delivered? Was it read? How many times? Has it been forwarded? To whom? Did they read it? Did anyone click on the links embedded in the template? Which ones?

 

The software reports back to the sender when email is opened. 

 

If the email is passed on, the system reveals who it was forwarded to. It also reveals if the links are used.

 

If the recipient of a mailPrimer email reports clicks through to a website, for example, mailPrimer reports exactly which pages were viewed and for how long.

 

This helps companies identify any problems or dead ends on their websites.

Companies can install the system on their own servers or put their email through the Calcium server, where the email is wrapped in the appropriate corporate template.

 

Calcium says mailPrimer “changes the look and feel to reflect corporate identity in a centrally managed fashion.”

 

Gael de Kerdanet, Calcium’s chief executive officer, says mailPrimer gives a company’s marketing department control.

 

He notes that with mailPrimer, embedded links in the template enable powerful cross-marketing strategies to be implemented.

For example, an email offer for a product can be linked to a specific web page, and the response tracked.

 

Calcium country manager David Lynn says people are swamped with email and have difficulty deciding what is relevant.

 

“People are time-slicing their days into even thinner slices,” Lynne says.

 

He says with mailPrimer, the sender”goes to the top of the list” for a recipient, noting if email isn’t handled quickly, it probably won’t be read at all.

 

“In the business context, that’s the difference between maintaining an on-going relationship, and losing them,” he said.

 

“It doesn’t matter who you receive mail from in a certain organisation, all the contact details are consistent, all the disclaimers are consistent.

 

“For a large organisation, it’s about managing email, controlling marketing, and presenting image,” Lynn says.

 

“For a smaller organisation, it may be about permitting them to look more professional, more capable, or larger than perhaps they are.”

 

Lynn says Calcium briefed 70 organisations on mailPrimer over the past month and was “pleasantly surprised by the uptake.”

 

Calcium is starting to grow a partner network in New Zealand as part of it’s marketing strategy, pointing out the need to establish support for the product as the company moves into new areas.

 

It is also talking with some major “multinational organisations” with the potential to become ‘reference accounts’ for Calcium.”

 

Calcium must move quickly.  Lynn says it is only a matter of time before someone, somewhere, launches a competitive product.

 

“At the moment we are the only ones in the market,” Lynn says.

 

“It’s a case of making sure we don’t outstrip our ability to service the market.  The issue really is ‘how much of a lead we end up with.”

 

An early adopter of the mailPrimer during its late development stages was the Workchoice Trust, which helps give high school students an informed choice of career opportunities.

 

The organisation contacts some 1500 companies in New Zealand and some 350 schools as it sets up its annual Workchoice Trust day.  On the day, young people visit potential employers.

 

National manager Kathy Williams says it is hard to send out normal mail without a call beforehand as the letter was often “buried.’

 

Workchoice Trust is funded by business and “any business that sponsors the day can come in and look at your books and where your money is going,” she says.

 

Williams says communication channels are now much clearer.

 

“It’s on our files that we sent it, and it comes back and tells us the person has opened it.”

 

She says many of the organisation’s emails went to chief executives.  If the emails were passed down the ranks, Workchoice Trust found out who got them.

 

Williams says the system saved time and cost.

 

Workchoice Trust no longer faced expensive printing bills.  It was also quicker in getting companies to sign up.  

 

Williams says that if a sponsor such as Fonterra asks “what am I getting for my bucks?” Workchoice Trust can show a report which details exactly how many people viewed the email carrying its brand.

 

She also noted that the reporting system helps refine email, as it reports which pages were read.

 

“If they all stop on page four, we want to know why,” Williams says.