Creating a Better User Experience with Email and Validations

Creating a visual journey for your customers takes a lot of hard work, and that’s something Flipsnack aims to alleviate. Since their start in 2011, Flipsnack has been developing a digital publishing platform with the creator in mind. Today, Flipsnack supports over two million active creators in making the best possible online catalogs, portfolios, magazines, and more from scratch or by uploading a PDF. 

When Diana Lascu, the Email Marketing Manager of Flipsnack, chatted with us earlier this year, it was clear that Flipsnack devotes itself to innovation. They’re continually expanding upon their library of templates available to Flipsnack creators while further innovating and advancing their design tool to give users an easy digital publishing experience. Ever since the beginning, Flipsnack has strived to be the best possible version of itself, and some of that comes with a few growing pains.

Back in 2017, Flipsnack was still using Google to send all of their transactional emails. Sending everything from Google was less than ideal for a variety of reasons, but Diana was especially frustrated by sending limits and the lack of analytics. On top of those issues, they were stuck on a shared IP that could keep their transactional emails from reaching the inbox.

Flipsnack never settles, and the company wasn’t about to settle for a mediocre email experience for their customers.

That’s when they decided it was time to make the switch, but before they could sign on with any email service provider, they did exhaustive research. They looked at multiple providers to best fit their needs: Mailchimp, Mailgun, Mailjet, and Sendgrid, to name a few. 

At the start of their search, they knew two things needed to be true with whichever ESP they picked. For one, the providers needed dedicated IP pools so Flipsnack could maintain an independent sending reputation. And secondly, Flipsnack needed a provider that could fill in the gaps they were missing with Google. On top of all that, it needed to fit into their budget. 

After much consideration and research, Flipsnack decided to switch to us – Mailgun. From their perspective, Mailgun checked all of the boxes. 

After migrating to Mailgun, Diana was able to get set up on a dedicated IP where their reputation would be unaffected by other senders. This dedicated IP gave their transactional emails the best chance of landing in the inbox. Once they were squared away with a dedicated IP and open/click tracking for analytics, Flipsnack was ready to send. So, how did it go? 

Really well, and we’re not just saying that. Flipsnack saw an overall increase in both their IP and domain reputation, all thanks to their sending strategy and dedicated IP. On top of that, their delivery rate sits at an impressive 98.4% with 75,000 transactional emails being sent each month.

“While transactional emails might not be the most fun and interesting emails, they provide information and certainty by confirming an action our end user has taken, or hasn’t taken, in the case of fraudulent activity. They keep our users at ease, and that’s something we really value as a company,” Diana shared. 

Mailgun provided the infrastructure, and Flipsnack drove it home with their dedication to a better user experience. 

One great strategy Flipsnack adopted to increase retention rates was sending out emails to users whose subscriptions are close to expire or whose payment has failed several times and who need to update their billing information.

Along the way, Diana also started utilizing our email validation tool during the account creation process to make sure they have a real address from the start of that relationship.

If a customer accidentally mistypes their email address, they’ll never get that user confirmation email. That’s a potential customer lost, and Flipsnack wanted to find a better way to prevent this. With validations in place, the new customer gets a suggestion to prevent that typo from ever happening in the first place.

“Deliverability is a crucial aspect for us and one of the main things we’re always focused on improving. This is why Mailgun’s email validation feature was so important for us when choosing the best ESP for our transactional emails.”

Diana Lascu, Email Marketing Manager, Flipsnack

At the end of the day, Flipsnack is devoted to the millions of creators who choose their platform to design amazing digital pieces. By pairing their email sending with Mailgun, they achieved a user experience that many businesses strive for.