Airtasker increases inbox placement rate from 60-99.9% with the Everest email deliverability platform.
The Highlights:
99.9%
Inbox placement rate
98
Avg Sender Score
$500k
Increase in annual revenue
The challenge:
Poor email performance and deliverability issues undermined the success of the Airtasker platform.
Airtasker relies heavily on the email channel to engage its two primary user groups: job posters and job assignees (“taskers”).
Email serves distinct purposes for each group. Airtasker’s emails update job posters on task progress, including offers received, payment requests, and follow-up questions about postings. On the tasker side, Airtasker sends regular emails to share new tasks available in the area and provide updates on tasks for which they’ve placed bids.
As Airtasker’s customer base grew, the company encountered mounting inbox placement issues. Airtasker’s emails frequently triggered spam filters, particularly messages about taskers earning money or completing jobs. Amid these challenges, Airtasker’s inbox placement rate dropped to an underwhelming 60 percent.
As a result, Airtasker community members frequently missed important email updates. This reduced the platform’s overall task success rate—a key performance metric Airtasker relies on to attract and retain customers.
Ongoing deliverability issues and poor list hygiene also forced Airtasker to limit email sends to avoid further damage to its sender reputation.
“Previously, our email sending was primarily transactional. This is because we had to maintain certain maximum sending volumes and we couldn’t necessarily send emails to our entire customer base at once,” said Nathan Adler, Product Manager of Platform Services at Airtasker.
This meant missing out on prime opportunities to use email for broader purposes, such as re-engaging dormant customers or sharing relevant content with their audience.
“Everest takes the hassle and worry out of managing your email deliverability. I like the fact that Everest is a user-friendly, one-stop shop for everything you might want to do with email.”
Nathan Adler – Product Manager of Platform Services, Airtasker
The solution:
The Everest email deliverability platform and Sender Certification program.
After careful consideration, Airtasker implemented Everest, the market-leading email success platform from Validity. With support from a dedicated Customer Success Manager, the Airtasker team quickly got up to speed on the platform’s functionality.
- Airtasker used the list validation functionality to identify and suppress inaccurate or problematic email addresses pre-send. This reduced bounces and spam trap hits that would have otherwise compromised its sender reputation.
- Airtasker also completed the Sender Certification program. This program, exclusive to Validity, placed them on the most complete allowlist on the market. This improved Airtasker’s email deliverability with global mailbox providers (MBPs) like Microsoft and Yahoo, as well as local MBPs like BigPond.
- The company used design testing features in the Everest platform to build new templates for Airtasker’s entire email ecosystem, ensuring their messages rendered optimally across the full spectrum of client devices and inboxes.
“Our email designs hadn’t changed for quite a long time. Everest allows us to easily confirm that our email designs are going to work and look great in a variety of client inboxes,” said Adler.
On a broader scale, the Everest platform provided Airtasker employees with visibility into their entire email program so they could identify problem areas sooner. This included opportunities to better monitor platform security to prevent phishing attacks and customer data leaks—crucial for a platform that regularly handles monetary transactions.
“Everest absolutely helped our deliverability issues. We believe the uplift was worth half a million dollars a year in revenue. But the ripple effect on customer retention and acquisition isn’t even captured in that number.”
Nathan Adler – Product Manager of Platform Services, Airtasker
The results:
Partnering with Validity put Airtasker on the fast track to consistent, best-in-class email performance.
After completing the Sender Certification program, Airtasker’s inbox placement rate jumped from 60 percent to 99.9 percent, even during high-volume sending periods.
For instance, Airtasker maintained a consistent inbox placement rate during a massive send from one IP address. This send was almost one hundred times the regular daily volume for this IP address. Normally, this type of “out of the blue” send would negatively impact a sender’s deliverability. However, the Sender Certification benefit meant Airtasker’s inbox placement rate remained steady at 99.9 percent.
The Airtasker team finally feels able to communicate clearly with customers about the job opportunities available—without wasting valuable time honing specific email language to avoid triggering spam filters.
Supported by richer insights into email deliverability, Airtasker also gained the confidence to use the email channel for a wider variety of use cases, including re-engagement campaigns, content recommendations, product updates, and feedback surveys to fuel platform improvements.
These deliverability improvements boosted Airtasker’s annual revenue by an estimated $500,000.
Airtasker’s employees are still realizing the full power of the Everest platform. Moving forward, they are eager to use its automated workflows more strategically and place more emphasis on DMARC reporting. They are also excited to explore BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) to capture more attention in customers’ inboxes by displaying a verified logo on their outbound emails.
Airtasker is a Sydney-based community platform that enables users to outsource daily tasks to those looking for work.
From an online and mobile marketplace, Airtasker users can post and bid on tasks ranging from simple to complicated, including home cleaning, auto repair, pet sitting, administrative work, and photography.
Since its inception in 2012, Airtasker has amassed over 2.1 million users and created $382 million worth of jobs.
