Pushing emails and marketing opportunities

Singapore - SingTel together with software company Consilient, as well as working with MindShare Group, has launched a free ‘push' email service to mobile postpaid customers, becoming the first advertising-based mobile email service delivering real-time email for the mass market.

The service, called MobileM@il, contains an advertising capability able to serve a minimal number of text and graphical ads side-by-side with subscribers' email messages. The technology was developed by Consilient and the service allows users to manage their email profiles and set up accounts through mobile phones. Users can have their emails automatically ‘pushed' from existing SingNet, Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail accounts.

"Developing this entirely new business model brings an extremely useful free service to our customers and a value-added offering to our advertising partners. SingTel has been looking at opportunities to increase the value and functionality of its mobile service, and email is the next logical step due to its widespread usage. Moreover, mobile users are already accustomed to using their mobile phones to send and receive text messages. This advertising-led service is an innovative way of allowing mobile customers to stay in touch via email while on the go," Quek Peck Leng, CEO of mobile for SingTel said.

SingTel now becomes the first operator in Asia Pacific to offer a free ‘push' email service to customers and Mindshare clients such as KFC and Pizza Hut are among the first brands to advertise on the service.

"With the embedding of this technology into an established consumer lifestyle, a new communication channel is now available for marketers to connect with more than a million consumers in Singapore, arguably the most highly penetrated mobile service market in the world," Jeffrey Seah, CEO for Mindshare Group Singapore said.

"This is a new medium that we believe provides us with an innovative way of reaching out to our target audience. Currently, every advertiser is fighting to use the same pool of mediums and armed with this new medium, it will allow us to cut through the clutter and communicate more effectively to our target consumers," Virginia Ng, senior marketing manager for KFC Singapore said.