Rebel.com’s already robust email delivery, security optimization, hosting and customer support is better than ever as a result of their partnership with delivery specialist MailChannels.
“Our customers are not computer security experts,” says Brett Tackaberry, Chief Technology Officer, Rebel.com. “They don’t know anything about patching or updating services and so it’s up to us to keep an eye on their email traffic and fix security problems when they arise.”
In 2020, Rebel.com began an initiative to protect customers against emerging threats and website security breaches that allow spammers to take over hosting services to send spam and phishing emails, which often leads to blocked email.
“We looked at building our own email security layer to watch for website security breaches, but it quickly became apparent that this would be a huge effort and expense to build and maintain,” said Brett. “When I learned that there was a service that could deliver our email and address our security concerns at the same time, it wasn’t hard to see how that would improve our customer experience for a far smaller investment.”
Rebel.com benefits from the same technology and services that MailChannels’ largest customers enjoy because MailChannels’ fees are volume-based. Unlike competitors, MailChannels never asks customers to pay per service, provide payment up front, or charge minimum or flat fees.
Rebel.com deployed MailChannels in July 2020. The number of tickets related to email delivery immediately dropped by 90%. In addition, MailChannels virtually eliminated email delivery outages and on the rare occasion Rebel.com customers experienced email delivery issues, resolution took just five to 15 minutes rather than up to two hours.
MailChannels will handle first-level support calls on behalf of customers like Rebel.com or provide training on MailChannels’ diagnostic tools to customers’ in-house support teams. Either way, email delivery and blocklist issues faced by solopreneurs and small businesses are resolved a whole lot faster with MailChannels.
Thanks to MailChannels, Rebel.com support teams are able to troubleshoot email delivery issues in real-time. As a result, Rebel.com customers are able to get back to business in less than 15 minutes. They’re not waiting up to four hours for a call back and constantly checking to see if their delivery issues have been fixed so they can get back to work.
“Before MailChannels, we were always reactive and spinning our wheels – we never got ahead of it,” says Brett, who points out mail delivery and security are far more complex than customers realize.
In a competitive space, Rebel.com’s performance and reputation are priceless because it’s the easiest it’s ever been for B2B and B2C buyers around the world to get feedback from their peers. Online reviews are just a click away and reviewers have plenty to say about everything from customer support to email delivery.
“Support and delivery are certainly part of the puzzle but they’re not the only factors that affect our reputation and our ability to attract and keep customers,” says Brett.
Rebel.com chose MailChannels as its partner due in large part to conversations with MailChannels’ account manager and engineer. It was apparent MailChannels really knows the domain name, hosting, email and security industry and has the relevant expertise and experience.
In addition, Rebel.com really appreciated the fact MailChannels let them set the parameters around both volume and pace. MailChannels gave Rebel.com the opportunity to go at their own speed, so employees had time to prepare, set up and test MailChannels on 10% of their live traffic in the first 30 days.
“MailChannels’ results proved their expertise, experience, and technology and the fact the 30-day trial was free was a bonus — I’d have been happy to pay for it,” says Brett. “We found so many compromised accounts and things that needed patching, which continue to benefit us to this day.”
The moment the trial started, MailChannels Outbound Filtering was identifying and removing the spam sources found on Rebel.com’s shared hosting platform. Of the email that MailChannels accepts for delivery, over 98% is successfully delivered to internet recipients. This delivery rate is among the industry’s best.
Removing Spam Cut Their Outbound Email Volume by 20 to 30%
MailChannels identifies compromised web sites and user accounts, helping customers to reduce the amount of email that they have to send through the service. In fact, most customers immediately cut their email volume by 20-30% during the free trial period. On top of the fact customers didn’t pay to remove those emails, MailChannels has eliminated the potential for related delivery and blocklist problems.
MailChannels is devoted to customer success and invests significantly in customer onboarding and training.
“They are very good at training and onboarding and that was good for Rebel.com,” says Brett.
Like all MailChannels’ Standard Plan customers, Rebel.com’s team had exclusive access to a MailChannels’ engineer to make sure they were comfortable with the MailChannels’ platform and its functionality. That MailChannels engineer walked Rebel.com through logging into the web management console and highlighted the dashboard’s statistics and reports.
From day one, MailChannels has been a great fit for Rebel.com.
“Their personal approach to customer support is a lot like ours — which is a real benefit to Rebel.com and our customers,” says Brett.