How Dribbble improved connection & scalable sending with Mailgun

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Connection is at the heart of any interaction, and for Dribbble, it's imperative to their business. Through Dribbble, designers can connect with each other as well as design-forward companies like Apple, Lyft, Google, and more to showcase their portfolios and find work. Given that Dribbble is driven to match these designers with projects and companies they are passionate about, every communication channel they have must meet a high standard of service. With email, Dribbble sends newsletters spotlighting various designers and projects each week across their customer base, as well as transactional email confirmations between companies and potential hires.

That's why when Dribbble’s email program started to have issues with their previous provider, they sought a better solution to maintain the community that their users love. After multiple attempts to contact support, Dribbble found their response times lacking for the amount they were sending through the platform.

Dribbble knew what needed to be fixed, and they knew that they needed to find an ESP with the support and expertise needed to optimize their email program. When the response wasn't what they needed, Dribbble decided to start looking for a new provider.

What Dribbble needed

When Dribbble started shopping around for a new provider, they knew several things had to be true. For starters, their next provider needed to have a responsive and helpful support team, and they needed a solution that would scale easily with their business as they grow.  As they evaluated various providers like Sparkpost, Postmark, and Mailgun, they realized that they wanted to take a more active role in their sending by understanding better best practices and regular syncs with their overall program health. Paired together with a desire for a better price per month meant that they had to spend some time evaluating the competition to see which provider would have the best support at the cheapest price.

Dribbble’s product team set out to test various providers and report back for crucial decision-makers. When they found Mailgun, our Deliverability Services checked off all of their requirements for a total email program migration. 

With a dedicated Technical Account Manager, they knew they would have one point of contact for any support and guidance as they scaled their sending. Coupled with the best pricing and service in the market - Dribbble was eager to get the ball rolling quickly.

Migrating platforms

As the platform migration approached, Dribbble relied on the expertise provided by their Technical Account Manager to make sure they had a smooth transition to their new provider. 

• Kick off - Dribbble is introduced to their Technical Account Manager, high-level timeline and transition process established.

• Planning - Dribbble’s Technical Account Manager met regularly with Dribbble’s technical team to help prepare their email program - including IP warm-up and implementation guidance. 

• Migration - Dribbble began transitioning transactional email traffic first as a pilot for their overall program, ensuring that their email streams would operate as expected.

After several sessions during the planning phase to review the overall process and procedure for the move, both the Mailgun and Dribbble teams got to work with the migration. 

Dribbble's first priority was migrating their transactional email traffic first. Given that it is the smaller of their two email streams, it made the most sense to move those over first as a pilot for their remaining sending volume. With all of the proper prep work completed in advance, their transactional stream was migrated over with no issue, with their marketing email stream following suit shortly after that. Due to the diligent work and communication of both teams, Dribbble's entire email program was moved over in just a few months with zero downtime. 

Early results

After just a few months, Dribbble started to see results in a number of key areas. Dribbble's Google Postmaster reputation, a measure of sending reputation, went from medium to high since moving to Mailgun - a considerable improvement given the presence of Gmail inboxes across the globe. 

By implementing better sending processes Dribble has been able to see astounding results, with their open rates more than doubling from 500,000 opens a week to 1.2 Million opens per week. That’s more designers and companies being connected each week than ever before, and that number is continuing to rise. Given their success, Dribbble is ecstatic to have made the switch to Mailgun:

"FOR US, AT THE VOLUME WE'RE SENDING – EVERY FRACTION OF A PERCENTAGE MEANS A POTENTIAL CUSTOMER, AND AS A COMMUNITY OF DESIGNERS, IT'S OUR JOB TO CREATE MEANINGFUL TOUCHPOINTS. HIGH DELIVERABILITY ENSURES THAT OUR MESSAGES AND OUR REACH ARE SEEN; ANY IMPROVEMENT IN OUR EMAIL PROGRAM HAS A HUGE EFFECT ON OUR BUSINESS."

• Michael Sacca, Vice President of Product at Dribbble

The path forward for Dribbble

Dribbble isn't going to stop at an improved reputation and higher clicks, as they believe there are still steps they can take to better connect with their customers. As Dribbble continues to scale, they plan on taking a look at how they can clean up their email lists proactively through the use of Mailgun's Validations Service. By cleaning their existing list, Dribbble aims to make sure that real people are connecting with their messages, rather than a mistyped address that doesn't exist. 

Interested in finding the next designer for your upcoming project? Dribbble would love to help your business start hiring. If you're a designer looking to showcase your portfolio – they can help with that too.