Several netizens across the globe were in for a surprise when they logged in to check their e-mail accounts recently – they had received a personalised e-mail from actress Namitha. This e-mail which came in the form of a newsletter, from the mail id actress.namitha2002@gmail.com, urged the receivers to watch her upcoming movie Indira Vizha which is scheduled to hit the screens on July 10.

While some fans appreciated the actress’ gesture of sending them an e-mail, many others were suspicious of the sender’s identity. In fact some of them even dismissed the message thinking it to be spam or even a prank. But it turns out that this was no delayed April Fools’ joke.The mail was written in Namitha’s characteristic style – the actress always refers to her co-stars as machan or machi and here too she had called Srikanth, who plays the male lead, machan. The actress also mentioned that she has a substantial role in the movie and profusely thanked director Rajeshwar for giving her this opportunity.

When she was contacted by this newspaper, Namitha admitted that she had sent the mail and also added that this was one of the movie’s producers, Sanjeev Sharma’s idea. She explains, “One day Sanjeev and I were talking at length about the promotion of Indira Vizha when suddenly he came up with this idea of tapping into my large fan base using technology. He told me how we could send mails to thousands of people at one go as a part of the film’s publicity. I was instantly bowled over by the idea and felt this was a unique way of reaching out to the masses. So I took time out and personally designed these newsletters and ensured there was liberal use of ‘Tanglish’ (combination of Tamil and English).”

According to Namitha, a total of 20 lakh e-mails have been sent out and she claims that she received approximately 22,000 replies within one hour. “It was amazing because I never expected such an overwhelming response. I was so overjoyed that I even replied back to some of the mails immediately,” says the excited actress.