Rebelmail is now making its interactive email capabilities available through an API, allowing developers to take advantage of the technology and incorporate it into other applications.
The startup works with customers Airbnb, Casper and HP to help them include things like photo galleries, quizzes and purchasing capabilities in their emails — and make sure the experience works across different email clients.
Co-founder Joe Teplow said the goal is to help marketers “treat the inbox as an extension of [their] website.”
With the API, Teplow said Rebelmail can go even further in that direction, so that it’s not just about helping marketers sell things via email. Instead, a dating app could allow users to rate potential dates over email, or an e-commerce company could enable customers to post reviews directly from an email.
“The reason why the API allows that is less a technical reason and more a business reason,” Teplow added. “Our customers now are marketers — they’re not sitting in a place where they’re able to augment product.”
With the API, Rebelmail is hoping to reach “product and engineering people.” You can read more in this company blog post.