Making The Case: Real World Solutions from People in the Trenches
PopularMedia Improves Deliverability and Customer Service
While some may think of viral marketing as hokey stunts or gimmicks, an innovative San Francisco company has turned the art of viral marketing into a science. Using advanced analytics and proven methodologies, PopularMedia's Pop Commerce platform represents a technology-driven approach to viral marketing that enables its clients to better understand customer behavior through successful, measurable and repeatable online marketing programs that leverage social networks.
The Challenge
Since it serves as the primary channel for enabling viral communication between customers and their friends, email is a core component of PopularMedia's marketing efforts. For example, a PopularMedia program might enable a client's customers to share an interactive quiz or other socially engaging user experience with their peers. Each month millions of emails are generated by PopularMedia.
Initially, PopularMedia discovered that they were missing one key statistic that could help them better measure the performance of their programs—email delivery rate. Their original email delivery system afforded no visibility into email performance beyond emails sent and clickthrough data. "We had limited visibility into a key component of our platform," recalls Joe Fahrner, vice president of client services at PopularMedia. "In order to change that, we knew we needed to find a solution that would give us that visibility."
The other challenge was finding an effective and flexible email delivery solution that could easily integrate with its Pop Commerce technology platform and optimize viral email deliverability. To that end, PopularMedia began looking for a versatile and scaleable in-house solution that provided all the functionality they needed, without requiring a dedicated operations employee.
The Solution
While searching for an in-house solution which met all of its criteria, PopularMedia quickly focused on StrongMail Systems. StrongMail offered all the functionality PopularMedia needed in a rack-ready appliance that could be easily integrated with their Pop Commerce platform. Plus, StrongMail had an impressive track record of delivering results for such high profile brands as Netflix, Ticketmaster and Fox Sports.
By integrating the StrongMail Email Integration Server with its Pop Commerce platform, PopularMedia gained a centralized solution—one that could maximize delivery and provide unprecedented visibility into the delivery of all email generated by its viral marketing programs. With instant access to detailed reporting on deliverability, bounces, opens and clicks, PopularMedia could optimize its programs in realtime and better reach client audiences. Additionally, StrongMail's data integration capabilities enable automatic, event-triggered email deployment, and its bounce management tools give PopularMedia the ability to identify and address deliverability problems.
The Results
Leveraging StrongMail's extensive API's, PopularMedia was able to easily and quickly integrate StrongMail with its Pop Commerce platform within three days. Moreover, since standardizing its email delivery on StrongMail, PopularMedia has improved its delivery rates by 20 percent "StrongMail provides us with a great centralized solution for sending and tracking all invitations sent from our platform," says Jim Calhoun, CEO of PopularMedia. Through StrongMail's in-depth reporting, smart bounce management, email authentication support and deliverability services, PopularMedia has been able to immediately address delivery issues and provide its clients with more detailed performance metrics. "StrongMail enabled us to go from anecdotal analysis of delivery issues to strategic assessment with full visibility into our email performance," explains Fahrner.
To build best practices and handle ISP-related issues with better data, PopularMedia also leveraged StrongMail's StrongDelivery Support. In one instance, PopularMedia was powering a campaign that focused on India. Because of StrongMail's real-time reporting, PopularMedia noticed a large number of blocks instituted by India-based ISPs. Within 24-hours, StrongMail identified the ISPs and resolved the problem.
StrongMail is a valuable partner in supporting PopularMedia's rapid growth. PopularMedia's efficient and effective customer outreach programs have been the biggest selling point for new clients. "Since implementing StrongMail, we've grown our business substantially, and the StrongMail architecture has scaled very effectively," concludes Fahrner. TMP