IncrediMail, a Tel Aviv-based software co whose eponymous flagship product allows email users from any provider to pimp out their messages with graphic backgrounds, unusual fonts and even sounds, boasts around 350,000 e-mails through its system each day, in nine different languages from 100 countries. Since IncrediMail launched in 1999, the application has been downloaded about 70 million times.
This year, the company has started to focus on exploring ad opps, and hired Javier Salom as director, business development, to work out of its New York City office. The former VP international strategic marketing at Miramax Films sees the film industry as a likely category. He says he’s currently in talks with big movie studios about creating film-themed IncrediMail packages, including branded backgrounds, e-mail notifications and wallpaper.
IncrediMail partnered with Yahoo! Personals last year to promote the co’s dating service, and Salom adds that other categories well-suited to offer branded packages are travel (by adding a link to a travel site at the bottom of a scenic beach background, for example), sports teams, music and gaming.
In June, IncrediMail launched a new spyware-free screensaver and background app called Magnetic, which it promoted through its network. It was downloaded more than one million times within a few months of launching. ‘This is for a product nobody had ever heard of,’ says Salom. ‘So you can just imagine what the potential is for brands people know.’
