INDUSTRY: Online Publishing

Headquartered in New York City, Thrillist.com is a free, subscription-based email newsletter and website that caters to male, urban professionals in their twenties and thirties. Each weekday, Thrillist delivers must-have recommendations on food, style, entertainment, gear and much more to 1.65 million subscribers across 15 major metropolitan areas.

Thrillist, a hybrid city guide/men’s magazine sends daily emails to its subscriber base of 1.65 million. To handle this volume - and ensure optimal deliverability - Thrillist needed a flexible, scalable platform capable of facilitating growth.

Download Case Study

Performance & Reliability to Power Your Business Forward

Headquartered in New York City, Thrillist.com is a free, subscription-based email newsletter and website that caters to male, urban professionals in their twenties and thirties. Each weekday, Thrillist delivers must-have recommendations on food, style, entertainment, gear and much more to 1.65 million subscribers across 15 major metropolitan areas.

With a subscriber base that nearly tripled in 2009, Thrillist had clearly latched onto the right formula for reaching this lucrative but hard to target audience. But crucial to their business model and continued growth was Thrillist’s ability to ensure that their messages actually reached subscribers, and did so in a timely manner. The popular MTA that Thrillist had originally used to manage overall email operations could no longer handle the load and offered no way to pinpoint critical deliverability issues. As Thrillist continued to attract subscribers, deliverability issues and operational costs soared because of shared servers, shared IP addresses and CPM charges from its service providers.

‘‘Momentum has been a key component in building our subscriber list and - most importantly - our business. It’s given our sales team the confidence to close big deals.’’
-- Ben Lerer, Founder, Thrillist

MOMENTUM THRILLS SUBSCRIBERS AND MINIMIZES EXPENSES

Two of the biggest factors in the success of Thrillist’s business are email deliverability and the reliability of its messaging platform. “The most important thing is getting into the inbox,” says founder Ben Lerer. “So we need our email system to work day in and day out, without fail.” To support the company’s rapid growth and reverse the escalating expense of a CPM cost structure, Thrillist needed a highly customizable, cost-effective message management solution that could ensure maximum deliverability, adapt to evolving ISP requirements, and scale easily to accommodate future needs. Momentum’s unlimited scalability and efficient application integration, combined with the simplicity and control of centralized management, made the decision clear.

Since implementing the Message Systems platform, Thrillist has eliminated the costly bottlenecks and redundancies caused by its previous system - enabling greater agility and innovation, and leading to major reductions in overhead costs. Take a look at some of the key business benefits the solution has delivered:

• Enhanced customer experience and brand loyalty
  To provide the greatest value to its list of more than1.65 million subscribers, it’s essential that Thrillist’s emails are consistently delivered to the right place at the right time. As the fastest, most powerful message management framework available, Momentum gets messages to the inbox on time. Whether it’s a new restaurant, bar, gadget or store, subscribers are sure to receive the daily recommendations they want precisely when they’re the most relevant.

• Cost savings and operational improvements via reputation management
  Efficient, cost-effective email operations require Thrillist to maintain a good sending reputation and strong relationships with ISPs. But its original platform provided no way to monitor results in real time, react to delivery problems as they occurred or avoid reputation damage. With Momentum, Thrillist can easily see when and where email is delivered, quickly resolve any issues, and align its email operations with ISP preferences to protect the brand and ensure timely message delivery.

‘‘We’ve achieved industry leading deliverability rates since implementing Momentum.’’
-- Ben Lerer, Founder, Thrillist

THE BOTTOM LINE: THRILLIST ACHIEVES VIRTUALLY 100% DELIVERABILITY, BOOSTS AD SALES

Message Systems has helped Thrillist not only reduce costs and strengthen its brand, but generate additional revenue as well. With the performance, flexibility and advanced functionality of Momentum, the company now boasts near 100% deliverability. “Our business lives and dies by the ability to deliver email,” said Lerer. “We track our deliverability every day using ReturnPath, and the results are astounding.” This near flawless delivery rate has led Thrillist to achieve some key objectives for business growth by empowering its editorial staff to create great local content and its sales team to attract more advertisers. According to Lerer, “Momentum has helped us build our list of subscribers while providing our sales team with the confidence to sell big deals.”