About VIRGEN
VIRGEN is a Las Vegas advertising and marketing agency founded in 1999. Its services include branding, design, social, and direct marketing, which uses email, messages, and customer journeys to reach people. Its work includes email programs for casino and gaming clients.
VIRGEN has run its email programs on the Maropost email marketing platform (Marketing Cloud) since the two companies announced an official partnership in January 2018, and it sends more than 100 million emails a year from multiple accounts.
“Maropost's technology was our premium choice years before starting this formal partnership.”
Merrell Virgen, President
VIRGEN
Mass email marketing across multiple accounts
Challenge
VIRGEN sends more than 100 million emails a year from multiple accounts. For its clients, each engagement starts with a dedicated account manager who keeps deadlines and client communication on track, and VIRGEN then executes the client's strategy and email deployment calendar using Maropost.
Casino and gaming adds its own requirements. Even well-equipped casino marketing departments face constant concerns around casino jurisdiction rules, ISP email delivery guidelines, and federal SMS regulations. One VIRGEN casino client said in 2021 that launching a new casino, merging player clubs, automating data ingestion from its core systems, and communicating with players during the pandemic had been a challenge.
Solution
The Maropost email marketing platform (Marketing Cloud) is where VIRGEN runs its email programs, using Email, Campaign, Journeys, Content, List, and Contacts across multiple accounts. The platform is built for high-volume brands.
For campaigns, teams can design emails in a drag-and-drop editor or in HTML and CSS, start from templates that match a client's brand, and schedule sends, with A/B testing and approvals before anything goes live. Deliverability Score and Spam Checker tools are part of the same platform.
Contact records can hold engagement, purchase history, and segments together, and a shared suppression list can keep opted-out contacts out of future sends. Journeys can run multi-step email marketing automation with entry rules, waits, splits, and exits, started by customer behavior or events such as a signup or purchase.
VIRGEN connects TechSol and a data mart to Marketing Cloud through API connections. The Marketing Cloud REST API can manage contacts, campaigns, and content programmatically, so data from other systems can reach the platform without manual CSV uploads.
Result
- Able to send more than 100 million emails a year from multiple accounts, with unique open rates above 50% and deliverability above 95% that the VIRGEN team considers industry-leading for gaming and casino email
- "Our email program has been the lifeblood of our casino marketing and player development programs," said a Director of Player Development at a hotel and casino, in 2021
- "Maropost and VIRGEN have been integral to the success of our digital marketing programs at all three properties," said a Director of Player Development at a casino operator, in 2021
Looking ahead
If VIRGEN continues running its campaigns and journeys on the Maropost email marketing platform (Marketing Cloud), it can add follow-up messages triggered by customer behavior, such as a signup or purchase. Segments built from engagement and purchase behavior can narrow who receives each send, and SMS, which VIRGEN already offers as a channel, can run from the same platform as email. Together, those additions would let VIRGEN grow a client's program on the platform it already uses to send more than 100 million emails a year.
