Marketers and technologists are feverishly working to solve the mobile conversion gap — a trend the industry is seeing of smartphone users converting at a rate a third or a quarter lower than desktop and tablet devices. At Inbox Awesome, we’ve just heard from Payfone’s CEO Rodger Desai, which uses secure mobile authentication for “fast checkout” within an email to bridge this gap.

The idea is simple: everywhere on the web, we as users are required to fill out forms that confirm our identity. But this is something that you never have to do when you’re using your phone. Think about it, mobile providers don’t ask you to fill out a form every time you turn your phone on to confirm who you are, so why should we always have to do so to check-out? Payfone uses automatic SIM card authentication to address that question, so that when users opt-in, they’re given the ability to check-out directly from the message. Once they open the message, Payfone’s API pings the specific service provider, confirms unique identifier criteria (age, address, credit card number, etc.) so that the payment can happen instantaneously — with zero effort on the user end.

We know that our audiences are always addressable; there’s always a device on hand, and they’re interacting with our brands on multiple platforms through multiple channels. When it comes to email, data shows that as mobile device adoption continues to rise, so do email open rates. This would be great if the inflated open rates translated into lift in clickthrough and conversion, but the opposite is happening. Open to click ratios are down — and worse, purchase conversion is dramatically affected. Marketers today need technologies like Payfone to meet this challenge, and we think it’s an interesting step in the right direction.

We’re going to find out more about Payfone and are looking forward to hearing how the speakers at #InboxAwesome are helping to change what’s possible.

Jason Grunberg is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at Marigold Engage by Sailthru, and a veteran in marketing, advertising, and content for more than 12 years.