How Switchboard improved email deliverability with Mailgun Validate

In the world of elections, reputation is everything. For Switchboard, it’s about helping candidates reach voters and supporters to win elections. Because every vote counts, Switchboard knew they needed to be at the cutting edge of communication technology.

Switchboard is a digital platform that helps candidates communicate more effectively with their voters and supporters. From one-click messaging and SMS, to email, short links, and analytics, Switchboard has supported more than 900 campaigns from local school board to U.S Senate races.

When it came to email communications, Switchboard needed to make sure their users’ messages reached the inbox, not the spam folder – the answer? Sinch Mailgun Validate. 

What Switchboard needed

With a well-established SMS channel, Switchboard saw the importance of email as key to an effective omnichannel campaign management platform. Email is integral to any digital communication strategy, but it comes with unique challenges.

In order for Switchboard to build and maintain a healthy reputation across their sending IPs, they needed to be sure to follow email deliverability best practices, particularly list hygiene.

When invalid contact data such as fake email addresses, spam traps, and typos end up in lists, it damages the sender’s reputation with mailbox providers. That makes inbox placement even harder and reduces the impact of email communication. Switchboard needed a solution that verified the validity of contacts and identified invalid contacts for removal to keep lists clean and secure.

The solution

As Switchboard continued to scale their email product, they needed an email validation tool that was easy to integrate, easy to use, and most importantly delivered fast and reliable results. After looking at some of the competitive products on the market they decided that Mailgun Validate was the only email validation product that could check every box.

Unlike some other major validation tools, Mailgun Validate offers fast and reliable bulk list validation, allowing Switchboard to validate lengthy lists quickly and effectively. Mailgun Validate also uses real send data rather than a broken SMTP handshake or sketchy panel data, that means the results are just as quick as they are accurate.

Mailgun Validate helps Switchboard in three primary ways:

1. Add value to their offering

Switchboard can now provide email list validation to all their customers as an included value to their product. That means, rather than having their customers seeking out vendors on their own, Switchboard’s customers receive email list validation as an included benefit. Switchboard prides itself on easing customer workflows, especially when the solution is scalable, like Mailgun Validate. So, this solution reinforces Switchboard’s brand and reputation by increasing customer value at no additional charge.

2. Protect their domain and IP reputation

Maintaining a strong sender reputation is key to any email program that wants to achieve strong deliverability. For that, email list validation is a must. When Switchboard ensures good list hygiene practices, it protects the reputation of everyone on the platform’s shared sending IPs. That means more emails reach the inbox.

3. Create happier customers

When the customer wins, Switchboard wins. With high-risk and invalid addresses removed from lists, Switchboard users see fewer bounces, higher inbox placement rates, and increased engagement on the email channel.   Whether it’s a fundraising message, invitation to an event, or reminders to get out and vote, email communication is at the heart of every political campaign. But first, your messages need to get delivered. That’s why Switchboard chose to partner with Sinch Mailgun.

Eyes on the future

This is only just the beginning for Switchboard. With email as a key steppingstone for their future growth, Switchboard hopes to continue expanding their email program to reach more voters and supporters for their customers with Sinch Mailgun as their partner.