During a year of change, email has become an even more crucial connection between businesses and customers. Email engagement increased by 200% in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As more customers stay at home, checking the inbox has become a regular part of their daily routines—day and night, we check in with our favorite brands and organizations.
In 2020, Twilio SendGrid kept businesses connected to customers by reliably processing over 1 trillion emails. Imagine 1 trillion letter-sized pieces of paper lined up end to end. That’s 173 million miles—long enough to travel to Mars and back when it's closest to Earth. Twice!
This incredible feat would not have been possible without our customers: senders both large and small who trusted us to deliver email to their customers. To celebrate this milestone, here’s a look at a few of our customers who helped us reach this goal and the email programs they built with Twilio SendGrid.
A surge in email sending was the norm across many industries, including the nonprofit sector. As many teachers and students transitioned to remote learning, DonorsChoose, a nonprofit that raises funds for teachers and students in need, relied on email more than ever to engage its user base. A personalized, multichannel strategy combining Email and SMS enabled the nonprofit to build lifelong supporters.
Here's how DonorsChoose has grown its email program with Twilio SendGrid:
Engagement boost by 70%: The flexibility to customize email experiences through Twilio SendGrid’s Email API drove engagement success, boosting open rates as high as 70%.
Automation increases efficiency: The email team can easily send automated promotional emails without overburdening engineering support.
DonorsChoose saw a 70% boost in open rates by personalizing its customers' email experiences.
With each trip around the sun, email recipients are evolving. Personalization helps email senders better engage recipients over time.
This past year especially, DonorsChoose created personalized lists to serve its donors—like those interested in providing anti-racism resources for classrooms or donors who needed a temporary opt-out option in light of economic conditions.
"Twilio SendGrid allows us to have more control over our promotional email program. This, along with reliable delivery at scale, has had a profound impact on our teacher and donor engagement.”—Jasmine Penny, Email Program Manager
Check out the philanthropic impact DonorsChoose has accomplished using Twilio SendGrid.
Adapting email programs to better serve customers was the key to success for many organizations during a year of contactless service. PetDesk, a veterinary care platform, quickly expanded its multichannel customer engagement strategy using Email and SMS. Sending out crucial policy notifications to pet parents, the company reliably delivered at scale with Twilio SendGrid’s Email API.
Here's how Twilio SendGrid supported PetDesk’s accelerated email growth:
Scale increase by 10x: Outbound email notifications, including vaccination reminders and health reports, scaled to 10x the average monthly volume after the onset of COVID-19.
Open rates of 80%: PetDesk has prioritized sending important, health-focused emails, boosting open rates to 80%.
As companies grow into sending millions of emails, it's important for senders to implement tactics like IP warmup to gradually increase email volume without running into trouble. Trusting the Email API’s flexible infrastructure, PetDesk reliably scaled its email output, reaching more than 5.5 million pet owners in a single week.
Read more about how PetDesk reliably scaled to deliver pet owners critical policy updates.
Among the most essential senders during a public health crisis, telehealth providers, like Luma Health, accelerated digital engagement strategies to provide patients care. Before COVID-19, Luma Health’s end-to-end offering focused on patient communication and engagement.
The pandemic spurred the company to expand to the actual delivery of care via telehealth—and for nearly everything, it relies on Twilio SendGrid to power it all.
Here's how Luma Health effectively delivers patients care while relying on Twilio SendGrid:
Reach more patients: The flexible Email API scales to accommodate increased sending for patient care.
Provide patients’ channel preference: The telehealth company meets patients at their channel preference—including email—to book appointments and receive appointment confirmations and reminders.
Learn from Luma—it’s never too early to plan for the growth of your email program.
When disruptions occur, a multidata center approach ensures crucial communications reach the intended recipients without even a blip on the radar.
“We cannot compromise on being reliable. These are sensitive, sometimes life-threatening situations, and with communication being the core of what we do, we cannot compromise on it. We have never had a reliability issue with Twilio SendGrid, and I think that speaks to the nature of its scalability and reflects on every single product we’ve worked with Twilio SendGrid on so far.” —VP of Engineering, Marcelo Oliviera
See how Luma Health provides better care for patients with email, and its omnichannel approach.
As we look toward sending another trillion emails, we know we cannot reach these grand milestones without our customers. From providing patient care to delivering order confirmations or raising money for schools, the emails our customers send daily are incredibly important—it moves us forward.
