Itison improves email deliverability, leading to an 11% increase in open rates.
The challenge:
Poor email deliverability and high greylisting rates.
As the company grew, so did their email program, which started to put significant pressure on the development team. Wrestling with vague email deliverability results and high greylisting rates, the team was concerned about the amount of time being spent on optimizing email campaigns. “We were struggling to achieve visibility into our email campaigns to see what was working and what wasn’t,” said Gavin Montague, Head of Development at itison. “As such, we were finding that too many hours were being spent on tweaking our emails instead of building a better product.”
The organization needed to improve their reputation amongst target mailbox providers (MBPs) and provide greater insight into deliverability.
The solution:
Sender Certification, reduced filtering, and a better reputation.
Itison chose Validity’s Sender Certification program to understand their true email deliverability metrics. The company’s email program underwent a rigorous review of sending processes and infrastructure to ensure they were following best practices at every step of their email program.
By becoming Certified, brands’ emails are acknowledged as safe and reputable by major MBPs, including Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL. Through continuous monitoring, dedicated security and compliance teams, exclusive data, and broad partnerships with leading MBPs, the program has led many to reduced filtering and better inbox placement.
“[Validity] has given us a level of insight into our email campaigns that is invaluable. The deliverability metrics we now have access to allow us to spot problems early on and make changes that will have a positive impact on our campaigns. With Sender Certification, we can now rest assured that our emails will reach our subscribers with no delays, keeping our brands and subscribers happy.”
Gavin Montague – Head of Development, itison
The results:
Fast delivery, high open rates, and strategic freedom.
As a Certified sender, itison experienced reduced throttling and faster delivery to major MBP inboxes. Previously, it could take up to 10 minutes for emails to be delivered, particularly when sending large volumes of emails at one time. Now, it takes just seconds. With more messages reaching the inbox, they’ve seen an 11% increase in open rates. Furthermore, due to improved reputation and recognition as a safe sender, Itison was able to expand their sending infrastructure with a simplified and faster IP warming period.
Finally, by having the ability to spot problems early on due to the wealth of Certification data now available, itison can experiment more rapidly and freely with their content and sending strategies. For example, the company discovered that enabling images by default in emails allowed them to generate a far higher rate of engagement for opened emails.
Headquartered in Glasgow, itison is an online deal marketplace that offers exclusive discounts at local businesses and five-star brands to more than a million members throughout Scotland and northern England. Most of their emails are daily alerts about the latest offers available on their website. With 70% of traffic attributed to their daily email campaigns, email is one of the company’s most important channels for customer communication and engagement.