Deep Linking in Email Marketing: How it Works, and Why it Rocks!

We were excited to hear that Twitter unveiled new “Twitter Card” types at its latest developer conference last week. These cards enable “deeper linking and engagement into other apps you may have on your phone.”

According to a post on Twitter’s blog:

“One of the most important features in the new Cards is the ability to allow users to download your app (if the user doesn’t already have it installed), or deep-link into your own app (if the app is already installed on the user’s mobile device). The ability to enable app installs and deep-linking is globally available across all Twitter Card types…”

The beauty of deep linking is that it eliminates extra clicks, brings content closer to consumers, and enables people to more easily take the actions they intend on taking. This eliminates friction from the process of taking action (for example, launching and using a mobile app), resulting in more people actually taking the action that you’d like them to.

We’ve been a big fan of deep linking at Movable Ink for a long time now, and proudly offer it as a core feature of our Agile Email Marketing platform. Below, Movable Ink’s Co-Founder and CTO Michael Nutt explains how the technology works:

“Deep linking in email works like so: When you create an app and submit it to the app store, you can register what are called “protocol handlers” that are name spaced to your company, for example Facebook’s is fb://. Anytime someone clicks on a URL using the protocol handler and they have your app installed, the app will open and receive instructions within the URL to launch a specific action – for example, opening a Facebook message composer with a pre-written note. However, if someone clicks on the URL and your app is NOT installed, they will receive an error message indicating that there are no registered handlers for that protocol.

Movable Ink enables deep linking in email while avoiding the error-message problem using an iframe technique in a web page. When an email link is clicked, a web page is loaded, and the iframe’s source is set to the protocol handler URL. If the app is already installed, it launches immediately. If the app is not installed, the click – rather than returning an error message – automatically directs the user to download the app. Failing both those conditions, a timer will trigger after half a second in order to seamlessly redirect the user to a mobile web page. This creates an optimal user experience across all possible situations.”

Here are some recent examples of emails that leveraged device detection with deep linking from Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” Seamless (the food delivery experts), and American Eagle Outfitters. You can also read a case study about Seamless’s use of deep linking to increase app downloads by 50% and food delivery orders by 90% here: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/email-mobile-app-downloads.

If you’d like to learn more about deep linking in email, give us a shout!

ISP Support for Video-in-Email

Here’s a chart showing major ISPs/email clients and their support-level for video-in-email — from full “true” video, to animated gifs that closely mimic video, to static images with play buttons that launch video players in a web browser when clicked.

The chart is accurate as of its posting date (January 29, 2013) — we’ll make updates as the highly fluid ISP landscape continues to evolve.

Realizing Agile Email Marketing: The Future of Video, Content, and Context

Movable Ink was featured in ClickZ today. In an interview with veteran email marketing industry analyst David Daniels, our VP of Marketing Jordan Cohen explained the benefits of Agile Email Marketing, Movable Ink’s new Video in Email solution, and the impact of mobile on email marketing campaigns.

Agile email marketing is different than the current waterfall process of email marketing campaign production. The current linear process of email marketing production assumes a certain level of rework, particularly as it relates to how testing is achieved in most email marketing applications. The agile approach is centered around the subscriber including up-to-the-minute contextual information, such as their location, time of day, and device. This is married with unlimited variations of content, historical subscriber data, and optimization rules to ensure that the right message is delivered to the right person at the right time. Such an idea is not new, but Movable Ink, a fast-growing New York-based company, has made this a reality for top retailers and brands. What makes its approach even more compelling is that it’s not an ESP; the company makes it easy to cut and paste its capabilities into the marketer’s existing email marketing solution.

Read the full article here: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2239284/realizing-agile-email-marketing-the-future-of-video-content-and-context

Emails We Love: Comedy Central Election Night Live

Comedy Central took advantage of yesterday’s election to boost downloads of The Daily Show smartphone app. This is the same email, but with different “top of the fold” image and call-to-action based on whether the message was opened on a desktop or smartphone.

Thank You

Thanks to all of our friends and supporters who have checked in with us these past few difficult days.

Not everyone on the team has power yet, and some of our loved ones have had to leave their homes and may not be able to return anytime soon, but the most important thing is that we are all accounted for, and are safe and sound.

Our hearts go out to all who have been affected by this week’s horrible storm. Wishing everyone a speedy recovery, and a return to “normal” as soon as possible.

- The Movable Ink Team

Emails We Love: Bloomingdale’s One Day Home Sale

Bloomingdale’s gives a whole new meaning to “Mark Your Calendar” in an email message, showing the exact number of days, hours, and minutes remaining until their special One Day Home Sale begins.

New Technology Offers Glimpses Into Inbox Of Future

“The inbox of the future is a consumer’s dream — and also a marketer’s,” writes George Bilbrey, president of Return Path, in MediaPost today. “In some ways it won’t be so different: Email marketers will still need to focus on creating a positive user experience, getting permission, demonstrating relevance, and delivering value. But there are also specific, technical innovations — some already in use — that promise to revolutionize the inbox and make consumers fall in love with email all over again”…

…”the messages of the future will be at least a little more interactive and customized. Some early indicators of the interactive inbox come from: Movable Ink (makes email more dynamic), Rapportive (displays social data for your contacts), Google Voice via Google Talk (allows you to make phone calls from Gmail), LiveClicker (video in emails) and TripIt (builds and manages your travel itinerary from email forwards).”

Emails We Love: Seamless (Halloween Edition)

Nice Halloween-themed — and device targeted — email from Seamless. Notice how it automatically detects the device used to view the email and includes a call to action specifically to “Get The iPhone App”.

Movable Ink wins Social category in Electric Ireland Spark of Genius Competition!

We are excited to announce that, out of 100+ companies that competed in the Electric Ireland Spark of Genius Competition, Movable Ink came out on top as one of four category winners. The competition was held in conjunction with this week’s prestigious Dublin Web Summit. Now we just need to figure out the best spot in our office to display this amazing trophy! Thanks to all who watched our presentation and voted for us, and congrats to the other category winners Tjobs SA, Ovelin and Social Fortress.

Emails We Love: Lilly Pulitzer

Lilly Pulitzer takes multiplatform email optimization to a whole other level. This is 1 email, but with 2 entirely different looks depending on whether you open it on a desktop or smartphone. (This is an example of Live Content, not to be confused with “Responsive Layout/Design.”)