The Challenge
Email marketing is a strategic tool for Musictoday, which provides monetization solutions services to the multi-billion dollar music industry for the world’s largest brands and media companies. Musictoday sends an average of nearly nine million emails a month, with double the volume during holidays.
However, the company had been limited in the type of customer data it was able to access through its email service provider (ESP). There was little flexibility in using data outside of what was currently uploaded within the ESP’s existing data field structure. Any changes to the data required extensive support from IT and a great deal of time to complete. If a time-sensitive marketing opportunity arose that required data not currently stored with the ESP, the marketing team was out of luck.
“The email service provider we were using required us to have a preconceived notion of what data we planned to use at any given time. While we could map in fields to add new data if a marketing opportunity arose, these changes were time-consuming and labor-intensive. I didn’t love being locked into a predetermined data structure,” said Ben Whitlow, Marketing Technology Manager at Musictoday.
The Solution
Musictoday uses MessageGears’ innovative email marketing platform for its music division to increase access to its customer data. “By partnering with MessageGears, we now have complete and total flexibility in the data that we use. I can directly access and combine data from any database and import files immediately,” said Whitlow. “Since we can create any possible list we want based on purchase behavior, we are able to react on the fly to changes in how we want to market and provide more dynamic content to consumers.”
In addition to greater access to data, Musictoday has also experienced increases in efficiency and deliverability. “We no longer have to have multiple servers. We went from a five-server platform to a single server that houses MessageGears’ Accelerator software. Now we just build an email and hit ‘send’ and MessageGears sends it through their cloud servers. Their team monitors deliverability and are responsive if they see blocks or throttling,” said Whitlow. “With the MessageGears platform, we sent out the first triggered welcome email in 3-4 days from concept to execution, which would have previously taken us twice as long, if not longer.” In addition, through the MessageGears platform, Musictoday can scroll through one template and preview how it will render to different recipients. This allows the marketing team to make sure that dynamic and personalized content is rendering properly before sending a message. “Our music platform has over 200 active stores. MessageGears’ technology allows us to tailor emails within one template driven off of one query instead of creating multiple templates,” said Whitlow.
In addition, through the MessageGears platform, Musictoday can scroll through one template and preview how it will render to different recipients. This allows the marketing team to make sure that dynamic and personalized content is rendering properly before sending a message. “Our music platform has over 200 active stores. MessageGears’ technology allows us to tailor emails within one template driven off of one query instead of creating multiple templates,” said Whitlow.
The Benefits
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- Ability to Respond Quickly to Market Changes and Opportunities MessageGears provides Musictoday with full access to their complete customer data at all times. As marketing opportunities arise, the marketing team can take full advantage of them.
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- Increased Deliverability and Efficiency Musictoday no longer has to manage deliverability or spend countless hours trying to ensure the right content is uploaded to the ESP at all times, which dramatically reduces the amount of time and resources required to create email campaigns.
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- Increased Relevancy with Dynamic Content Musictoday is able to provide more personalized, dynamic content to recipients by accessing all of its data and tailoring emails to be unique based on recipient info from a single template.
“I have used other email service provider platforms extensively, and MessageGears is one of the simplest ones to use. It has an intuitive interface, which is key for people on the frontline. Even if you have never used the MessageGears platform, you can still find a way through it,” said Whitlow. “MessageGears provides flexibility of data, ease of use, and the reliability we need.”