How Fynd Academy improved deliverability with Mailmodo

Challenge

Fynd Academy is the edtech branch of Fynd, a multiplatform tech company specializing in retail-tech solutions.

It has an accelerated learning program designed for freshers and professionals to build their essential technical and practical skills in coding and design. After successfully running workshops and live projects, they wanted to expand further and decided to start a cohort for full-stack Java development.

The leaders decided to launch this learning cohort within a month, and the marketing team’s responsibility was to get maximum enrollments. Since time was limited, the marketing team decided to use the most personalized channel for outreach: emails.

Email marketing had worked for them so far. However, they had noticed a downward trend in their email opens. This poor performance could also impact the promotions of the upcoming cohort.

So, they decided to send a campaign to their internal team to investigate the drop in email opens and found that their emails were going to spam. In other words, their channel of choice faced a deliverability problem, and they had limited time to fix it.

Solution

At this point, Fynd Academy turned to Mailmodo and asked if they could revive their email deliverability and use this channel to get registrations for their upcoming learning cohort.

Mailmodo emphasized putting subscribers’ interests first and refraining from unplanned email blasts to build trust with subscribers and ESPs alike. They suggested a holistic approach involving a systematic warm-up process, hyper-segmentation, and an educational email flow to restore domain reputation, and take their emails where they belong—inboxes.

Better inbox placement would translate into more email opens and increase the chances of getting more registration for the learning cohort.

Here’s a breakdown of the strategy -

✅ Followed a proper warm-up schedule: They started a 15-day warm-up process with fewer emails being sent initially to avoid triggering the spam filter, and then the volume was gradually increased. On day 1, they sent 200 emails, and the volume increased by one and a half times daily.

✅ Used fragmented scheduling: Mailmodo advised Fynd Academy to leverage the fragmented scheduling feature to enhance the warm-up process. This way, they can schedule the next seven days of daily campaigns all at once, saving hours each day.

✅ Sent only education emails during the warm-up: Instead of sending promotional emails, Mailmodo suggested Fynd Academy repurpose their blogs as educational emails and share ongoing marketing trends in their campaigns.

This strategy ensures that recipients find value in the emails being sent from a particular domain, engage with them, and thus contribute to building a better reputation.

✅ Used a survey to segment the list further: In 15 days, the email opens improved indicating that the domain reputation had improved and one could expect better email performance. However, it was important to send only relevant emails to maintain the domain's reputation in the future.

So, before inviting recipients to join the learning cohort, Fynd Academy sent a survey campaign to gauge their interest. Only those most likely to register would then be invited to join.

The best part? Since this campaign had an interctaive survey, the subscribers could share their responses without leaving their inboxes, leading to a higher submission rate and more potential registrants.

Check out this template in action. Fynd Academy created it in a few minutes using Mailmodo’s no-code editor.

✅ Sent hyper-targeted emails: Fynd Academy planned the next steps based on the responses. If the subscribers expressly denied interest in full-stack Javascript, they weren’t sent any more emails on this topic.

However, those who expressed a desire to change jobs or upskill in the survey were sent an email introducing them to the cohort. If they still didn’t register, Fynd Academy sent them a follow-up email about the learning cohort's highlights to nudge them once more before considering them uninterested and ending any communication on this topic.

Outcome

By focusing on reviving email deliverability, Fynd Academy improved inbox placements and reached the right audience for the upcoming learning cohort. The email opens also increased by 9X indicating that their strategies worked.

The interactive survey campaign also registered a whopping 15% submission rate leading Fynd Academy to send a hyper-targeted invitation campaign for their learning cohort. As a result, more than 50% of the enrollments were directly attributed to email marketing.

If Fynd Academy had not prioritized deliverability, they could have missed an opportunity to engage potential registrants due to poor inbox placement.

Key learnings for your next marketing campaign

Warm up to win big Email deliverability is the foundation of email marketing success. It is earned over time by sending email campaigns that recipients look forward to, and ESPs trust enough to place in the inbox. This process is called domain warm-up.

Once your domain establishes its reputation, your emails will land directly in the audience’s inbox, increasing the chances of being opened and engaged with. This strategy has no shortcuts, but you can seek the help of experts or follow others' examples to craft a tailored warm-up schedule for your business, just like Fynd Academy.

Segment first, pitch later

Your email list is more than a bunch of contacts. It’s made up of people who may be at different buying stages. Putting them into one bucket and blasting similar emails is less likely to work.

However, by segmenting based on their interest, you can send tailored emails that meet them where they are and address their specific needs. This hyper-personalized approach can boost the chances of them eventually noticing your offerings and signing up.

For example, Fynd Academy had 37K contacts who had interacted with them in the past, but instead of assuming their interest, they probed their interest and pitched the cohort accordingly.

Conduct surveys to collect zero-party data.

Zero-party data is the new gold; interactive emails have made gathering it seamless. They allow you to ask your subscribers directly about their preferences and enable them to express them as quickly as possible.

No friction leads to more submission and more zero-party data.

As you read in Fynd Acadmey’s success story, they leveraged it easily and maximized both email engagement and cohort enrollments.