Online Education achieves 98% overall inbox placement with Validity Everest.
The Highlights:
100%
Inbox placement rates at Gmail and Microsoft
98.1%
increase in click through rates
97
average sender reputation score
The challenge:
Low visibility into email performance causes poor deliverability.
Online Education’s email program is a foundational part of their business strategy. Since the company functions without a call center, the sales and marketing teams depend entirely on email to communicate with prospective students.
Most of Online Education’s sales come from email subscribers who discover them via Google search and are then marketed to through a series of offers throughout the year. The sales cycle is relatively long, so making multiple contacts via email keeps prospective students engaged and interested in what the company has to offer.
Online Education has over 100 websites serving customers in 35 countries, meaning both deliverability and engagement are influenced by local standards, customs, and laws. Measuring and responding to these multiple influences becomes exponentially harder without a helicopter view of email program performance.
The marketing team uses a custom-built tech platform to design and schedule their email campaigns. However, this platform provides little visibility into inbox placement, spam trap hits, and other important “below the surface” metrics, making it difficult to monitor email performance and adjust their strategy. As a result, they experience poor inbox placement at major mailbox providers.
For instance, a large percentage of emails sent to Microsoft users lands in the spam folder. This not only has a significant impact on sales, but also on students who are unable to receive login details and other important information about their courses. It also creates a significant customer service overhead as high volumes of missing email queries have to be responded to.
The solution:
The Validity Everest email deliverability platform and Sender Certification program.
Online Education increases visibility into their email performance with the Validity Everest platform. The marketing team can now see meaningful metrics and real-time insights into their email performance, which allows them to stay ahead of any problems that might arise. Custom alerts notify them of any deliverability issues, so they can be corrected before they hurt their performance.
“We find it useful to review inbox placement and spam trap activity on a daily basis and change our email marketing strategy accordingly,” said Anthony Mondello, CEO at Online Education.
They’re also a part of the exclusive Sender Certification program from Validity, which gives them priority status with leading mailbox providers and spam filtering vendors worldwide. This helps them achieve superior inbox placement year-round.
“Before Validity and the Everest platform, we had little visibility into inbox placement. Fixing this issue quickly became an urgent priority. Introducing Everest to the mix gave us the real-time metrics we needed to navigate our strategy.”
Anthony Mondello – CEO, Online Education
The results:
Greater visibility, better sender reputation, and 100% inbox placement at both Microsoft and Gmail.
Online Education started with a zero percent inbox placement rate at Microsoft. After qualifying for Validity’s Sender Certification program, their inbox placement rate skyrocketed to 100 percent. They’ve also maintained 100 percent inbox placement at Gmail.
“Sender Certification really was a game changer,” Mondello said. “It helped us achieve inbox placement rates we could only have dreamed of pre-Certification.”
With greater visibility into their email performance, they’ve been able to adjust their strategy in real time and maintain a 98.1 percent average inbox placement rate across all major mailbox providers (Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo/AOL, as well as important regional providers like BigPond, Iinet, and TPG). The improved performance at Gmail is particularly valuable as this MBP represents 70% of Online Education’s subscribers.
As a result, their average sender reputation score has risen to 97, placing them in the top decile among other best-in-class senders. These improvements have resulted in more sales and conversion of opportunities. They have also ensured students are receiving important information on their journey of self-discovery.
The Certification process helped the team reflect on and improve some of their internal processes, such as database cleanliness, which has had an immense impact on performance. The key for Online Education has been to rely on data to guide their strategy.
“Certification has benefitted us in so many ways. We are definitely a stronger business for it.”
Anthony Mondello – CEO, Online Education
Online Education Pty. Ltd. is a modern and innovative provider of e-learning courses. As a global leader in this field, the company places a strong focus on skill-oriented learning, bringing together highly experienced professionals and inspired individuals who wish to improve personally and professionally.
Online Education offers interior design, photography, art appreciation, makeup, and nutrition courses to students through 103 websites across 35 countries.
