The New Year = A New Solution From Hotmail

Hotmail have rolled out a new solution called Active Views, which could change the way users interact with their emails. Billed as the industry's first interactive email solution, Hotmail users can be sent emails that allow them to interact with an email, within the email. Hotmail have put together a demonstration video, which you can view here

With 360 million Hotmail users, the benefits are clear for all to see - for consumers they can interact with a company without having to wait for the browser to open a new window, for marketers it should mean high response rates and cuts out the issues of invalid links being broadcast.

As shown in the video, the creative can include text fields, drop down boxes and more, which could work well for companies such as those in the travel sector for accommodation searches and campaigns which need to provide real time information - such as online ticket companies to show ticket availability.

One industry blogger has said that it will be used by retailers to check whether an item is still in stock. I'm not convinced retailers will be too keen about this, it could mean that consumers would not visit their site and could lose them an opportunity to sell a different/alternative product.

Whilst I applaud the new technology being introduced, it does come with some issues. You only need to look on the You Tube video to see that some consumers are not welcoming the technology with open arms - concerned about receiving more spam/unlawful emails and also the risk of their security (both in terms of personal information and the risk associated with running Java scripts). Hotmail users are also angry at the timing of the launch at a time when thousands of users lost historical emails at the turn of the year.

In the past, we have been told not to include text boxes or embed videos in HTML creatives because of the issues regarding deliverability so it will be interesting to see if there are any issues with deliverability when using Active Views.

The use of email as a marketing tool is constantly changing and updating and will need to address current challenges and develop new innovations such as this to continue to provide an effective channel.

Personally, I think this will be an innovative solution that in the future will be as common as HTML emails are now ... once the teething problems are ironed out and consumers buy into the benefits. I don't envisage the solution alone increasing response rates to massive proportions but it will prove to be another weapon in the marketers' fight against declining response rates.

What do YOU think about this?

Paul Jempson, Direct Marketing Consultant