How It Works

The message sender only needs to indicate the specific class in the email’s existing html tags, and when the web mail service discovers the OMF tag it changes the email view and highlights the key elements within the message. For example, as we see above, there are user pic of the user, who sent you a request in social networking site, action links and text of the notification.

A notification with friend request can be tagged the following way:

<div class="friendship-request notification"> Alexey Sergeev! <span class="text"><span class="actor">Olga Korbis</span> has sent you friend request on Moi Mir@Mail.Ru.</span> <a class="action-link" href="http://my.mail.ru/my/friends_accept">Accept</a> invitation. <a class="action-link" href="http://my.mail.ru/my/friends_reject">Reject</a> invitation. </div>

And this notification will be shown in user-friendly way in a list of emails in mailbox.

The semantic tags in the email enable the automated mail service agent to detect the message type as well as the type of image and list that should be included in the “preview”.

The OMF specification defines the method of tagging information within the email, and is not a method of their display. Therefore the “receiving side” of the email decides how to use the received information (in examined example above — Mail.Ru.)

It is important that OMF is fully integrated into the existing postal infrastructure, — so any other mail service or mail program, which is not, but supports OMF can display the email without names or extra inclusions/elements.

OMF is already used in the mail.ru web mail service. Additional information you can find at http://api.mail.ru/mail/omf (on Russian language).

How OMF Benefits Email Publishers (Sites and Mailing Lists)

As a result of using OMF automatic notification senders and mailing lists (social networks, internet shops, forums, blog hosters, online games, news site and others) have the opportunity to receive a higher response rate from users who receive their emails.

Tagged emails have more effective presentation in mail service interfaces than similar untagged emails. For example OMF allows the user to see his or her friend’s picture on the mail list page.

In addition using OMF reduces the number of clicks that a user has to make to access a site (for example, in the Mail.ru mail service the user can “accept friend request” or “confirm order” in an internet shop directly from the email list without opening the message) and it significantly increases the conversion.

What It Gives to Mail Services

By supporting Open Mail Format, a mail service can first and foremost increase the appeal of using the service by providing a more convenient and understandable presentation of emails.

If the service understands OMF tags, it can automatically classify messages, sorting and grouping them or marking the important parts of messages. All of this increases user loyalty towards the service and increases conversions and user retention rate for web sites.

How to Begin

If you send email newsletters or notifications to your users, please have a look at the Specification document for detailed implementation instructions. Implementation of the OMF standard does not require additional development and only requires a minor modification of existing templates. The introduction of OMF support to existing emails takes from 1 to 5 days for the majority of services (depending on the number of templates). After implementation, your emails will immediately be displayed with marked semantic elements from the Mail.Ru mail service, the most powerful interface in Russia and CIS countries, and consequently supporting a standard for other mail service interfaces.

If you have any questions or suggestions — omf@corp.mail.ru. Open Mail Format is an open standard and we are preparing to develop and refine it, and therefore welcome your suggestions.