Pitney wants to turn posts into e-mail angels
THE ONLINE REPORTER 15th October 2001
PITNEY WANTS TO TURN POSTS INTO E-MAIL ANGELS
Pitney Bowes is pitching emailAngel, an e-mail address correction and forwarding application, as a new online business opportunity for postal organizations.
Pitney execs argue that emailAngel, developed by the company’s docSense business unit, puts a lid on the growing problem of undeliverable e-mail because of changes in e-mail addresses. Typical e-mail churn rates are put at about 25% and upwards of 50% on campuses. Businesses are estimated to pay $20 or more to resolve undeliverable e-mail messages.
Since posts already provide physical change-of-address services, they’re supposed to be suited to handling e-mail changes as well.emailAngel is supposed to work like this. Customers register their change of e-mail address with a postal authority to enable e-mail forwarding. The posts then use that large database of e-mail addresses to provide businesses a means of forwarding undelivered mail for a small fee. Postal outfits can also enter into revenue-sharing partnerships with other businesses such as credit card companies for their database and sell correct e-mail addresses to businesses with a customer’s permission.Pitney says that posts could offer email-Angel under their own brand.Postal outfits implementing email-Angel are supposed to benefit from the added web traffic to cross-sell and up-sell other products and services.For consumers the two key benefits are supposed to be assured message receipt and the knowledge that their e-mail address is lodged in a permission-based network that maintains their privacy.
Businesses benefit through lower costs for resolving undeliverable e-mail, finding lost customers and reconciling accounts.
emailAngel is supposed to work with any e-mail system without reprogramming the posts’ internal IT systems. Pitney claims emailAngel is capable of forwarding an unlimited number of messages.
Pitney, which reportedly invested several hundred thousand dollars on the product, has yet to sell emailAngel to any post. However, two of them have supposedly shown interest in the thing.
Pitney declined to provide pricing information on emailAngel.
Besides offering a version of email-Angel to corporations, Pitney is also implementing the system internally and expects to save $200,000 the first year.
