Friday, March 14, 2008

Free E-mail System Tracks Transactions

An entrepreneur, frustrated at the inability of event-based e-mail to produce any decent record of delivery, has developed what he calls "an enterprise-grade event-based e-mail system" called TriggerMail.

"Event-based e-mail is essentially transactional e-mail," said Neil Capel, founder of TriggerMail, speaking to Techworld. "It is user-generated, i.e. it is triggered by a user event. This could be when a user signs up to a website and receives a welcome e-mail, or when they purchase an item."

TriggerMail went into beta in November with five clients and the full release has now been launched this month.

The company claims to get a very high hit rate in getting event-based e-mails into the right inboxes, by monitoring the delivery and click-though activity to ensure e-mails don't end up trapped in the spam folder. It is configured with domain keys and SPF (Sender Policy Framework), and is a member of the Spam Sender Control to increase delivery rates.

"The idea for TriggerMail came from having to deal with the increasing problem of getting potential users to read their e-mail from new websites," said Capel. "We had to engage the user and be able to monitor their reaction. TriggerMail enables that, and ensures e-mail doesn't go in the spam folder."

TriggerMail also allows for the e-mail statistics to be integrated into Google Analytics, and e-mail templates can be edited in both HTML and text.

The TriggerMail network consists of five independent connections to Tier 1 global transit providers. The architecture is built from the ground and is distributed over several separate Continental hubs, including Level 3 Communications in the Americas, KPN in Europe and Africa, and Teleglobe in Asia and the Far East.

Capel admits that the company is currently targeting consumer-focused websites, but will be looking at B2B in the retail space shortly, as well as medium sized e-commerce websites.

"Brand new websites should absolutely use us, as we can shave off four weeks of development time," boasts Capel, pointing to the easy integration of TriggerMail's APIs.

Pricing is especially important for companies developing new websites, and TriggerMail is offered free-of-charge in return for text-based adverts appearing in the e-mail.

The other pricing model is "pay per delivery" based, and the website includes a price calculator to help companies estimate the costs, but typically it starts at 1.2 pence for up to 100,000 e-mails per month.

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