SendGrid is a single scalable platform for CINC’s email needs

About CINC

In 2011, Commissions Inc. (CINC) was founded on the encouragement of some of the nation’s top brokers to build a platform that could run an entire real estate business from top to bottom. A few years later, CINC has become one of the fastest growing real estate technology platforms in North America.

CINC’s comprehensive technology solution connects real estate brokers and agents to homebuyers and sellers by providing brokers tools for creating attractive websites, managing and engaging homebuyers, and efficiently managing team and overall business activity.

The Challenge

CINC uses email as a primary communication channel between real estate brokers, agents, and their audience. “Email is a large and important part of the CRM tool that we offer to our clients. Through our platform, real estate brokers and agents can nurture and converts leads with automated drip campaigns or property alerts so they never miss the hottest listings,“ says Matthew Swanson, Co-founder and Chief Software Architect at CINC.

As a startup in 2015, CINC faced the same challenge as many AWS customers: to build their own email solution, or plug into an email service provider to send transactional and marketing email. CINC originally delivered email on behalf of their clients over a home-grown SMTP server. However, from Matthew’s experience at his previous company, CareerBuilder.com, he knew first-hand the implications of building an email program with internal resources:

• CINC would have the resource burden of setting up and running their own email server, spending valuable engineering time managing the complexity of email delivery instead of building their product. “Efficiency is key as a startup,” says Matthew. “We needed to get up and running quickly.”
• CINC would need quick support if they ran into any issues scaling their email program.

Since every email CINC sends represents a revenue opportunity, they needed to find an email partner that would help them achieve industry-leading deliverability to ensure that every one of their client’s emails makes it to the inbox.

Why SendGrid and AWS

CINC reviewed a few email service providers and found SendGrid to be the turn-key solution to get started quickly without committing extensive resources to the process. CINC integrated SendGrid into their backend systems, a process which only took a few minutes, and gained access to:

• A single scalable platform for their email needs, proven at scale with senders like Uber, Airbnb, and Spotify.
• Built-in delivery tools that are continually being optimized through compliance, MTA, and security advances, removing the burden of keeping up with the changing email landscape.
• Real-time analytics and performance feedback with SendGrid’s powerful Event Webhook and easy to use dashboards for monitoring their email program.

With SendGrid, CINC could easily add email to every facet of their business. “SendGrid has been a very responsive and supportive partner for us in our email program,” says Doug Forester, Senior Product Manager of Email, CINC. “SendGrid has continued to improve their top of the line product offering, which helps us improve our email program for our clients. With SendGrid, we’re confident we’re staying at the cutting edge of the ever changing email landscape.” 

Now AWS customers can also access SendGrid via the AWS Marketplace as the premier AWS Marketplace email service, giving companies like CINC the ability to leverage SendGrid’s scalable email platform while also enjoying the simplified procurement and billing experience provided by AWS.

The Benefits

After switching to SendGrid, CINC saved considerable engineering resources by reducing development time spent on email. CINC’s development team was able to get out of the email management business, and focus on what they do best–powering solutions for real estate agents and brokers. “We now have 51% of traffic coming to our clients’ websites from email. This means that through email, our clients are able to engage and build relationships with interested homebuyers. It’s an essential channel for us, and thanks to SendGrid we don’t have to worry about these emails getting delivered,” says Matthew.

“We’re excited to make SendGrid’s robust, turn-key email solution available on the AWS Marketplace for companies like CINC that rely on email for their business,” says Elliot Goldwater, Director of Business Development and Partnerships at SendGrid.

Scott Heimes, Chief Marketing Officer at SendGrid, sums up what this means for email senders. “AWS Marketplace provides customers the ability to easily find, compare, and deploy services that are critical to their business,” says Heimes. “SendGrid’s availability on the AWS Marketplace as a single-solution for transactional and marketing email means that it’s even easier for senders already running on AWS to leverage our platform for scale, deliverability, flexible APIs, marketing tools, and industry-leading support, allowing them to focus on their business instead of email management.”