Q Interactive Broadens E-mail Offering

Marketing services firm Q Interactive has expanded its email offering to include mail blasts to the opt-in subscribers of its publisher partners. The move should greatly expand its addressable audience in that medium.

The company, previously known as CoolSavings, has until now managed email campaigns sent only to people who have signed up with its own Web properties. The new service lets advertisers send messages to those who have asked to receive newsletters from a particular publisher. The messages will be publisher-branded, so consumers recognize them as coming from a company they’ve agreed to receive offers from.

Since Q Interactive is targeting consumers based on demographic, behavioral and transactional data, one advertiser campaign could be branded by multiple publishers. Q Interactive represents over 1,000 sites, and publisher partners include About.com, Meredith Corp. and Weather.com.

“This is a logical extension for us,” explained Q Interactive Chief Marketing Sales Officer Matt Wise. “We’re just applying a new medium to lead generation.”

According to Wise, the company will also send publisher newsletters featuring messages from multiple advertisers. Advertisers that have used the firm’s services include Wal-Mart, Pampers, Bookspan and Sony BMG Music.

Q Interactive’s TrueConversion Engine determines the most appropriate email target audience based on demographic information provided by consumers, transactional data, and appended third party data, and refines that audience based on consumer behavior. “What’s unique is that they can also feed back to us demographic information to help us tailor our creative,” said Joshua McCleary, VP of acquisition marketing at eForce Media, a lead generation firm that uses Q Interactive’s services.

Q Interactive will begin offering its new email service beginning next month. The company anticipates its permission-based email list to hit 40 million addresses by the end of this year.

The move mirrors another change the company has pursued for over a year. After managing campaigns only on its own site since its inception, it set up a network and began distributing offers to other publishers, like Knight Ridder, Meredith Corp., About.com and Weather.com, reaching 16 million unique monthly consumers.