pop goes the e-mail

Interactive shops Fuse and Popstick have formed an alliance to provide e-mail marketing services.

Boston-based Popstick delivers marketing messages through “POPgrams,” or audio visual e-mails that use Macromedia’s Flash technol ogy. Messages are personalized to the targets’ locations, job functions, interests and contact histories.

With the alliance, Newburyport, Mass.-based Fuse will integrate its creative capabilities with the POPgram technology. Fuse began searching last fall for an agency partner, choosing POPstick after reviewing shops nationwide. One of the deciding factors, Fuse said, was the POPgram’s ability to track information on who received the e-mails, when they were received and whether they were forwarded to someone else.

Currently, the two shops are creating Fuse POPgrams for Rochester Electronics, United Plastics Group and Dictaphone, a Stratford, Conn., speech-recognition product manufacturer that has been a client of both shops. In addition to Dictaphone, Popstick has created POPgram campaigns for Microsoft, IBM and Xerox. Fuse is also pitching new business with its partner.