Interactive email branding a crucial link to all online marketing efforts says Dries Morris, Operations Director at Securicom. He says interactive email branding provides an invaluable, if not critical link to a company’s website and other online marketing activities: “It’s about engaging recipients in a way that calls them to action, and then offering them a quick and convenient way of doing so. It’s like opening-up a conversation and getting them to talk back.

“It might sound airy-fairy but it’s not. With the technology available nowadays, it is possible – and easy – for a company to engage and interact with its target audiences in this way using email,” says Morris.

‘Interactive’; ‘relevant’; and ‘engage’, are concepts that are rather over-used in the marketing space, but Morris says that email branding needs to be all three otherwise a company runs the risk of annoying and alienating its audiences rather than winning them over and building their loyalty.

“With the volume of mail entering the average inbox everyday, much of it spam, companies need to be sure that their email marketing is more than just eye-catching. It has to be relevant, engaging and interactive.

“This might have been a tall order a few years ago but email branding solutions have evolved to such an extent that companies can turn everyday business email messages into purposeful, dynamic and interactive points of interaction.

“It’s no longer about distributing static marketing messages en mass to an email address book. Instead, email communication that would have happened in the course of normal business is turned into a marketing and branding opportunity. The mere fact that the email has arrived from a trusted or recognised address, a contact the recipient regularly deals with in, makes it relevant and less likely to be ignored.

“Email branding becomes interactive when the recipient, enticed enough to click on a link from a banner or graphic through to the company’s website or another landing page providing more information, becomes an active participant in the process,” he says.

With Securicom eBranding, branding and banners can be tailored for specific groups and attached to every outgoing email from specific senders or departments to help drive recipients to a website or into another online marketing or customer service programme. The solution also boasts advanced reporting functionality that enables companies to learn more about their target audience with every click they make.

Morris says marketers can and should be taking better advantage of the high degree of interactivity that email provides.

“Few marketing mediums offer the level of interactivity that email provides. It also offers marketers a meaningful opportunity to get to know their audiences. If click through rates are low, they’re off the mark and they’ve either got the message or the recipient all wrong. The proof is in the click.

“By leveraging the interactivity of email branding in everyday email communication, companies can open up the lines of communication with recipients and bridge the gap that exists between them and the company’s website and other online marketing programmes,” he concludes.

Securicom eBranding is offered as a service to which customers subscribe so there is no software purchase or installation required. The service, hosted upstream by Securicom at an ISP, is web based and includes access to Securicom’s round-the-clock support infrastructure. It also boasts top notch security and compliance features to ensure that outgoing mails are safe, virus-free and, compliant with corporate email usage rules.

Companies subscribing to the service have access to a user-friendly, web based console from where administrators can use existing templates, or design their own, to configure and brand all outgoing company email.