The Challenge
Email marketing is a core service provided by Active Engagement, a fundraising organization that assists political candidates and organizations with engaging supporters, growing their donor base, and raising funds. In fact, email is at the center of everything Active Engagement does. As such, the company’s success is largely dependent upon the efficacy of its email marketing programs. When Active Engagement experienced problems and limitations with its email service provider, the company began asking, “What would it look like to have a good email partner?” The company went back to the drawing board and began sketching a description of the ideal email vendor. A few key requirements included:
- Flexibility in accessing and using customer data
- Open line of communication with engineering and deliverability support
- Simplification of data synching
The Solution
Active Engagement’s search for an ideal email service provider led the company to MessageGears. Active Engagement is now using MessageGears’ innovative email marketing platform to send an average of 60 million emails each month. By switching to MessageGears, Active Engagement has been able to expand and increase its business.
“Our business has changed because of what we’re able to do now. Approximately 80% of the volume we are sending are opportunities we wouldn’t have had without some of the advantages we gained through MessageGears. We’ve been able to make email and managing other people’s email files a much bigger part of our business because of MessageGears’ platform. Before, we didn’t have control over data and sends, but now we have the ability to do a lot more. In fact, we use MessageGears not only for our own clients, but we are also taking on more work for other agencies and companies in similar spaces,“ said Brian Davis, Chief Technology Officer at Active Engagement.
“As a result of using the MessageGears platform, we have been able to sign sizable clients because we are enabled to do things other vendors can’t. MessageGears has really been a competitive edge for us,” said Davis. “We just picked up a large client we wouldn’t have been able to touch without MessageGears. We couldn’t have done the project before working with MessageGears.”
The Benefits
- Access to Data in Real-Time for Increased Personalization The MessageGears platform provides Active Engagement with a global view of recipients. Having access to a recipient’s past donation history allows the company to dynamically create emails without having to sync data back and forth.
- No More Syncing Data The biggest challenge Active Engagement had with their previous system was syncing data back and forth and keeping data up-to- date. With the MessageGears platform, all of the data lives behind Active Engagement’s secure infrastructure so there is no need to sync data.
- Improved Email Marketing Effectiveness Having direct access to data has increased Active Engagement’s overall email marketing effectiveness, including targeting, deliverability, and segmenting. In addition, a global customer view also allows Active Engagement to make more aggressive decisions about filtering lists.
- Direct Access to Support Active Engagement especially appreciates having a direct line to MessageGears’ engineering and deliverability support teams.
“MessageGears is atypical in the way customers can pick up the phone and speak directly with them about deliverability. I’ve never worked with a provider with the level of transparency they have. MessageGears assumes responsibility for getting emails out. If there is an issue, they see it as their problem to figure out. They are transparent with what they are seeing, and they won’t just blame it on your list. They will help you figure out how to get the best deliverability possible,” said Davis.
