Online sports and betting media company, Racing Post, scores a 276% increase in open rates and doubles their click through rate at Hotmail with Return Path Certification

Industry: Sports & Gaming

Challenge

Racing Post is the definitive horse racing, bloodstock and sports betting media company with an online and television properties. Racing Post email campaigns, managed by leading email service provider Database Group Interactive (DbGi), are generally promotional in nature, communicating to Racing Post’s in-house list of 65,000 subscribers to publicize upcoming racing events and drive traffic to Racing Post’s betting website. However, delivery rates to Hotmail hovered around 97% and since Hotmail addresses make up a third of their total subscriber list, they wanted to boost their delivery rates to 100% at this domain to achieve optimum results.

Solution

As a Return Path Certification partner, DbGi recommended that Racing Post apply for the Return Path Certification program, the industry’s largest and most widely used whitelist. Return Path Certification is built on a network of trust that entitles world class email senders to receive preferential treatment and special privileges from participating ISPs and email receivers including Hotmail. As a Certified sender, Racing Post would experience increased deliverability to 2 billion inboxes worldwide, automatic image and link enablement at Hotmail and daily performance reporting to help them maintain their good standing. Additionally, Certified senders receive a trusted unsubscribe button to help reduce the number of complaints; an issue senders need to manage regularly to maintain their status in the program. As a Return Path Certification partner, DbGi knew that Racing Post already had a great email reputation and low complaint rates, and was confident that Racing Post would qualify.

Results

Racing Post applied for Return Path Certification and was accepted to the program. It was like being in the winners circle. After monitoring the results of similar campaigns both pre and post certification, Racing Post achieved 99% delivery to Hotmail. This increase in delivery coupled with the rendering benefits at Hotmail caused open rates to surge from 5% to 18% - a 276% increase – and click through rates to double. Moreover, the addition of the trusted unsubscribe button to Racing Post emails resulted in fewer unsubscribes and a complaint rate reduction of nearly 80% when compared to rates prior to joining the program.

Customer Feedback

“Since joining the Return Path Certification program, we have seen a dramatic increase in both deliverability and response. At Hotmail, we achieved a 276% increase in open rates and doubled our click through rates. As an added benefit, our unsubscribes and complaint rates significantly decreased which means we have more engaged readers. Now, we consistently reach our customer and prospect inboxes and realize an increased ROI for each campaign. Return Path Certification is well worth it."

- Lucy Watson
Marketing Manager at Racing Post