INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Until now, Rebel has been known as a platform allowing marketers to incorporate interactive elements into their emails
Today, it’s launching a new version of its API that will allow developers to build entire emails, interactive or not.Co-founder Joe Teplow
explained that the new Rebel Lite API was created in response to developers who were already using the company’s API.“Our customers
loved being able to build these actionable modules in bite-isized chunks with our API,” Teplow said
In fact, they loved it enough that they started asking, “Could we build the entire email with your API”So with the Rebel Lite API,
Teplow said they can create emails using JSON, “without writing one line of HTML.”And yes, this is a tool built specifically for
developers, not a drag-and-drop email editor for marketers
Teplow said that as the industry has become more complex, “Email as a channel requires a really tight integration between marketers and
developers.”But what’s so hard about sending an email Kevin Dutra, who leads Rebel’s product team, explained, “The main problem in
email market fragmentation on the rendering side.”In other words, Dutra said it takes extensive testing to make sure your email shows up
properly on every device and email client, turning the creation of email into a full-time job
Rebel, on the other hand, is constantly keeping track of changes in email rendering, so if you build an email using the API you can take
advantage of all that work to know that your code is up-to-date and that your emails will render properly.In addition, Rebel has created a
number of reusable components to enable the creation of complex layouts.Teplow added that the new API could also help Rebel reach a new
audience — not just large enterprises, but also “regular developers at a smaller company.”“They weren’t a fit for Rebel before,
but we’re slowly starting to let those people in,” he said.
