The Daily Maverick: Beating Conventional Wisdom with a Stick

When Daily Maverick moved their email marketing to TouchBasePro, they got a 4% increase in Open Rate, as well as an 18% increase in Click Rate. In our latest case study, we find out why they chose TouchBasePro.

The TouchBasePro staff has an amazing attention to detail and have supported us wholeheartedly through the setup process. They’re always on the lookout for ways to help us improve.

– Styli Charalambous, Daily Maverick CEO

The Daily Maverick and Email Marketing

Email marketing has always been important to Daily Maverick and their reach. While traditional print newspapers seem less important in daily life than before, Daily Maverick have capitalised on the online trend of instant access, fast publication and wider reach.

But, some traditions will never completely die off. Instead of expecting their users to visit their website several times a day, they deliver their daily news summaries direct to their subscribers’ inboxes, as opposed to their doorsteps. Subscribers can choose between a morning and afternoon edition (or both) along with a weekend edition.

In addition to being an important ad revenue source, email marketing is what drives their readers back to their site daily. This means that Daily Maverick can remain completely independent, relying only on the revenue generated from these ads to fund their important work.

Since moving over to TouchBasePro, Daily Maverick have seen massive improvements in their email marketing. Let’s take a look at a few of the aspects that have left them most impressed.

Building Better Campaigns

With TouchBasePro’s integrated template builder, compiling lengthy campaigns has become a breeze. We worked closely with Daily Maverick to custom design a template that would fit their highly specialised needs. They also use our RSS feed integration to automatically populate their newsletter, saving valuable time.

John Stupart, newsletter editor at The Daily Maverick, has this to say about using TouchBasePro to compile their campaigns:

“It’s really easy to use now. We’ve taken 45 minutes off of every campaign, and when you’re working to a deadline we can focus more on producing great content and delivering a better service to our readers

In addition to saving so much time, their campaigns have been reduced significantly in kilobyte size, making it easier for subscribers to receive them. This also means their campaigns are shown in full in every inbox, instead of getting cut off in Gmail, another improvement that Stupart and his team are very happy with.

By The Numbers

The main benefits that The Daily Maverick have experienced is with their campaign reach. When you’re sending over 2 million emails a month, you want to make sure you know where they’re going!

TouchBasePro works tirelessly to ensure that as many emails as possible reach the inbox and, since Daily Maverick have started with us, their reports have seen a massive jump in open rates, click through rates and social sharing.

Open Rate

Comparing their previous reports to the campaign performance on TouchBasePro, The Daily Maverick quickly saw a 4% increase in their open rate, within the first week.

Click Rate

Campaign engagement has also increased, with an average click rate of 30%, sometimes reaching as much as 47%, compared to the previous click rate of around 12%.

Social Shares

The easy way that TouchBasePro facilitates and tracks social sharing across Facebook, Twitter and email forwards has also shown in the social growth of their campaigns, which have increased by 150% across the platforms.

Keep on Growing

Another easy-to-use feature that The Daily Maverick have put into action is the sign-up form. By copying and pasting some simple code into strategic places on their website, they can make sure that anyone who is interested in getting their campaigns can sign up at the click of a button.

These subscribers are instantly added to the database stored in their TouchBasePro account, and filtered into segments to match the campaigns they’ve chosen to receive. No extra admin needed, which is another huge time saver. Especially when you’re averaging 500 new subscribers a week!

Wrap Up

From the moment that Daily Maverick came on board with TouchBasePro, they have seen massive improvements in their sending. Between time saving, cost saving, the simplicity of the system, not to mention the progress reflected in their reports, it’s been a move that they are very pleased with.