Media publisher improves deliverability by 20%, email send time by 600% and email volume by 33% by switching to StrongMail

London, 04 August 2010 - Magicalia, a digitally led cross-media publisher and platform provider, has drastically cut its email send time after moving its entire email marketing programme to StrongMail, a leading provider of online marketing solutions for email and social media. Using StrongMail, Magicalia has also been able to improve deliverability by 20 per cent and email volume by over 30 per cent.

Magicalia, which owns and operates 75 consumer websites and 3 magazines ranging from the parenting to the extreme sports markets, receives over 2.5 million visitors and 18 million page impressions across its range of Magicalia-platform sites each month. It was suffering under a custom-built email marketing solution that had returned only an 80 per cent delivery rate. It was also taking 5 hours to deliver just 200,000 messages, as well as a considerable amount of time keeping up with ISP changes.

Chris Corderoy, CTO at Magicalia, comments: “With so many unique users on our websites, maintaining an individual relationship through email, which is a key communications channel, was a real challenge. We needed a solution that would reduce delivery time, improve deliverability and, crucially, integrate easily with our in-house commerce and community platforms.”

Magicalia performed a comprehensive analysis of all the ESP and other off-the-shelf email solutions on the market.  Aside from integration, key priorities were cost and the ability to perform timed deliveries.  After weighing up the solutions against one another, StrongMail was chosen for its superior ease of use, performance and the value for money it provided.

StrongMail's patented delivery technology enables Magicalia to send one million emails an hour. As a result, Magicalia’s largest email campaigns are now completed in under 45 minutes, improving delivery speed by over 600 per cent. This reduced sending time has allowed the company to increase its marketing and e-commerce email output by 33 per cent, from 1.5 million emails per month to over 2 million currently.

Additionally, StrongMail’s Live Updates feature automatically keeps on top of ever-changing ISP filtering protocols, which allows Magicalia to effortlessly handle corporate anti-spam delivery parameters such as bounce filter definitions and recommended domain throttle configurations. StrongMail's Strategic Services team helps Magicalia guard against future ISP problems by instructing them in the latest email delivery best practices.

StrongMail's virtual routing sending technology has helped Magicalia improve its  sender reputation. Consequently, the company has seen its deliverability jump from 80 per cent to over 95 per cent, an increase of 20 per cent, which effectively positions the company for continued growth.

Paul Bates, managing director of StrongMail UK, said: “Publishers like Magicalia are having to move more and more of their business online to remain ahead of the competition, and they need business tools that can evolve with them.  StrongMail integrates tightly with customer databases allowing businesses to segment customer data by spend, activity and usage.  This means that, while they may be sending millions of emails each month, each email can be closely tailored to the specific needs and behavioural profile of each recipient, ensuring a truly personal experience.”

Magicalia also benefits from StrongMail's real-time reporting offered. The company can now analyse campaign reports on a per-customer, per-mailing basis, enabling more targeted, relevant and timely mailouts in the future.