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Inbox preview automates email testing and ensures consistent display across mobile devices and leading email clients including Gmail, Hotmail, Lotus Notes, and Outlook versions 2003 through 2010

smartFOCUS, a global provider of intelligent multi-channel marketing software, has launched a new email testing capability for its eChannel marketing software. ‘Inbox Preview’ enables marketers to test the display of marketing emails across more than twenty leading email clients, including Gmail, Hotmail, Lotus Notes and Outlook 2003 through to 2010, and mobile devices such as smartphones and iPads.
 
smartFOCUS’ new Inbox Preview functionality has been added to smartMARKETER eChannel, an application within smartFOCUS’ flagship smartMARKETER suite. Pricing for Inbox Preview starts at £25 per month for a minimum of 100 tests per month.
 
smartMARKETER eChannel is a powerful yet user-friendly e-marketing SaaS platform that spans email, SMS, RSS, and web microsites. It can be used as a standalone application or used as an integrated module of the smartMARKETER suite. It handles all digital channels with fully dynamic personalisation capabilities and integrated content management for editing text and images. smartMARKETER eChannel provides real-time tracking for campaign management and optimisation; can be automatically triggered so campaigns can be linked to events and responses; and provides advanced reporting. 
 
‘Inbox Preview’ provides an intelligent solution to the lack of established standards for displaying email. Until now, marketers have struggled to ensure that their communications display correctly across a broad range of email clients. With Inbox Preview, marketers simply load an email and see how it displays across more than 20 of the most popular email clients. Tests are run for, Outlook 2003 through to 2010, Hotmail, Gmail, Lotus Notes and many others. There is no need to install and log in and out of a succession of different email systems. Inbox Preview also solves the challenge of marketing to increasing numbers of mobile end users reading HTML email across diverse devices, clients and screen resolutions.

Tim Watson, operations director for smartFOCUS said:

As technology evolution continues to accelerate, an increasingly diverse range of mobile devices is being adopted by consumers wishing to check their email. Because there is still no universal cross-platform mail client standard, this growing variety of devices presents real challenges that are only likely to become more complex in the future.  From a recent sample of more than seven million emails, we’ve seen a five percent increase in those being checked on iPhones alone – a figure that has doubled over the last year. This indicator combined with an expansion in adoption of Android handsets and other smartphones, demonstrates that the diversity in the market is now dictating a demand for mechanisms that ensure the right messages continue to reaching the right audiences, displayed as marketers originally intended.

Another pain point for marketers arises from image blocking rules and how images are displayed when blocked. This can have a negative impact on the success rates of email campaigns and reduce response rates. smartFOCUS Inbox Preview enables emails to be previewed with and without images blocked, so marketers can test thoroughly and with confidence.