Buffalo Studios Uses SendGrid’s Scalable Marketing Email Service to Automate and Optimize Their High Volume Campaigns

The Customer:
Buffalo Studios

Buffalo Studios is a social gaming company whose goal is to provide social networks with games that help friends build relationships through interactive entertainment. Their customers are very engaged players who like the highly social element of playing wildly popular games like Bingo Blitz and Bingo Rush. Buffalo Studios values their players’ enthusiasm and incentivizes them with opportunities to gift and trade, and rewards players for creating large teams.

The viral nature of online gaming and Buffalo Studios’ incentivizing has earned them millions of players a month who can access their games across multiple platforms including Facebook, Kindle, iOS, and Android.

The Challenge

A growing user base and lack of in-house resources led Buffalo Studios to seek a scalable and reliable email marketing solution.

With millions of players a month and a large mobile app constituency, email is both a necessary form of communication and a main retention channel for Buffalo Studios. With such an engaged user base, it’s important for them to update their customers on a daily and weekly basis about game updates, new features, and seasonal marketing offerings.

With so many email campaigns to deploy, and no external email solution, Buffalo Studios was both taxing their in-house resources and missing out on tracking valuable customer engagement metrics like delivery, click, and open rates. As their subscriber base grew, they realized that they needed a trustworthy outside solution that could both help them scale and could provide the data they needed to strategically shape their email campaigns.

Solution

An easy to use, affordable solution that could adapt to their growing business needs.

Buffalo Studios had a number of requirements for their outside marketing email platform. As a start-up, they needed an affordable solution that could be easily managed by in-house marketers and their rapid growth rate necessitated a flexible platform that could accommodate them as their email volumes continued to grow. They also required:

Automation: With their increasing email volume, Buffalo Studios wanted to limit the amount of manual effort that went into their list upkeep and customization. They found their answer in SendGrid’s Marketing Email dashboard and API that automate their email marketing process and allow them to customize their marketing program to adapt to the challenges they face as they advance their business.

Analytics: While using their in-house servers, Buffalo Studios had no access to information about how their newsletters were resonating or performing with their audience. Through SendGrid’s marketing email dashboard, they can easily access their click through rates so they can match them with their game statistics to see what is converting. With this data, they can make smarter choices about their email content and sending frequency.

Multiple IPs: In addition to looking for a solution that provided analytics and ease of use, Buffalo Studios wanted the ability to send their marketing email across multiple IPs. At an affordable rate, they were able to secure 7 IPs that they now split between two of their most popular products. With these multiple IPs, they can track delivery from each to better evaluate performance of their customer lists. Where securing multiple IPs at another solution could have been cost-prohibitive, it was an easy and inexpensive transition with SendGrid.

Reliability: With email volumes that continued to grow month after month, Buffalo Studios couldn’t afford to lose any momentum. They needed a reputable solution that provided consistent deliverability and top-notch, around the clock customer service that could support them when needed. SendGrid provided them with their own dedicated account manager who has helped guide them through the scaling process and also supplied them with extensive documentation to further ensure that they’re following best practices.

Results

Ultimate scalability with access to the data and tools they need to shape their growing business.

Buffalo Studios has leveraged SendGrid’s Marketing Email Service to grow from sending approximately 100,000 marketing emails a month to sending over 20 million a month. With SendGrid’s intuitive UI, setting up and deploying their campaigns is no longer a huge time commitment and customizing their marketing emails, managing subscriber lists, and checking analytics now only takes a few clicks.

SendGrid’s Marketing Email Service offered Buffalo Studios the most affordable, low maintenance, and reliable solution that has helped them earn a 91.8% sender reputation. They now experience low bounce rates, very few spam complaints, and have maintained a consistent mailing volume. With SendGrid, Buffalo Studios is saving in-house time and resources and can rest assured that their email solution is cost-effectively scaling with them.

Client Feedback

Salim Mitha,
VP Marketing & Business Development

"When looking for an email solution for our growing business, we compared SendGrid against all of the well-known email providers, and in the end found that SendGrid was the optimal solution for a high-growth start-up like ours. We have found SendGrid to be easy, scalable, cost-effective, and flexible."