Note: Image sourced from a Hotmail YouTube video.
Introduction
The Hotmail Team has introduced an interactive email technology called Active Views. The technology allows recipients of Active Views emails (within Hotmail) to interact with the email itself.
Hotmail showed examples of two of their early partners, Orbitz and Monster. Recipients of the emails could search a flight (in the Orbitz email) or search for jobs (in the Monster email).
Interactive Emails and Virtual Event Promotions
Interactive email technologies present interesting possibilities for virtual event email promotions – and, more broadly, for any email promotion that seeks to elicit a response. Imagine the following for virtual event email promotions:
- Register for the virtual event
- Enter your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. identity and see which of your followers, friends, connections, etc. have already registered
- Navigate through the session schedule and indicate which sessions you’re interested in attending
- Complete your attendee profile – upload your image/photo and add a short bio
- Social sharing – let your social networks know that you’re interested in the event – or, that you’ve just registered
The possibilities are endless.
Considerations
- Only Hotmail “trusted parties” can utilize Active Views
- The technology is platform-specific (it’s limited to Hotmail)
- The technology is new and largely untested (at a large scale)
- It remains to be seen how well the technology functions across platforms (e.g. email clients, operating systems, tablet devices, etc.)
- While security provisions are in place, it may open a window for providers of phishing and malware
Related Links
- Active Views introduction on the Inside Windows Live blog
- TechCrunch: “Hotmail Active Views Look To Make Email Interactive“
- ClickZ: “Hotmail Active Views Revives E-mail Innovation in 2011“
It's All Virtual 