

How Tealeaf Academy increased student engagement 3x - old-gregg
http://blog.mailgun.net/post/40719408774/how-tealeaf-academy-increased-student-engagement-3x

======
andrewjshults
I've implemented similar systems twice before (social media at frid.ge - YC
S'10, b2b adtech at ADstruc) and think that if you are doing onsite messaging,
reply-by-email should be a core part of your messaging implementation. Users,
especially non-technical ones, have an expectation that you can reply to any
email (set the reply-to on your outgoing message to a mailbox you monitor if
you want a cheap test). Depending on your product, reply-by-email can give you
a fairly competent mobile experience on the cheap.

Highly recommend mailgun for this, since the routes + email cleaning (removing
signatures, replies, etc.) makes this super simple to implement. At frid.ge we
used sendgrid (mailgun didn't exist at the time) and spent a lot of time
dealing with problems that mailgun has already solved (at least better than we
ever did - stripping signatures without destroying the message body is very
difficult).

------
old-gregg
This is basically a nice tutorial on implementing two-way email messaging
between machine and humans. Kudos for creative use of our "Email Routes"
feature (disclaimer: I work for Mailgun).

------
ckipel
Former and continuing student of Tealeaf here.

The mailing list idea was a great idea. It helps a lot and makes me feel more
comfortable when someone of similar skill level is able to help tackle a tough
problem.

~~~
cglee
Your cohort was pretty active, and I think a lot of it had to do with the
reply-by-email functionality. For example, I was able to just reply while on
my cell without fumbling with mobile Safari. You should've seen earlier
cohorts, a lot less discussion (sorry guys, if any of you are reading this!).

------
knwang
Author of the blog here. In my opinion the inbounding email workflow is very
under-utilized. Email is one of the best user input channels - while most
people do not keep a web page open all the time, they do check emails very
often and knows how to use it. Posterous and TripIt are great examples of
using this well when collecting user input/data is a high priority for their
apps.

Let me know if you have any questions, or Mailgun in general - I have looked
into a few different email service providers and happy to share perspectives

~~~
noelwelsh
Couldn't agree more. We don't currently do nearly enough with email, but we
have big plans for the future.

What are your opinions on the other email providers? I've glanced at a few but
Mailgun seems by far the most developer friendly.

~~~
knwang
Typically there are 3 use cases for email services - transactional emails,
campaign emails and receiving emails. You have the most options with it comes
to sending transactional emails. But pay attention to some of the lower priced
providers because they only help you to "send" emails, but not putting much
effort that the emails are actually delivered - it is hard engineering with
all the email provider's spam rules etc. The ones I recommend in this area are
Mailgun and Postmark. Both have good reputation doing this well.

Then you have inbounding emails, which is newer and less providers do that.
Both Mailgun and Postmark have it, and there are some newer players like
cloudmailin, which I haven't used.

On the campaigning side, the biggest player is MailChimp with good reputation.
I have used their service, but it feels like it's mostly built for marketers -
Nice UI, a lot of templating choices, and your workflow is mostly in the
browser. If that's your use case, they should serve you well.

As for as I know, Mailgun is the only email provider that has all 3, plus
Mailing Lists and Storage (you can create mail boxes.. or basically build your
own version of GMail on top of Mailgun).. For Tealeaf Academy
(<http://www.gotealeaf.com>), we use delivering, receiving, mailing lists and
campaigning, so Mailgun is what we picked. It also has a "closer to the metal"
feel with their lower level APIs, which we like a lot.

I'd also recommend Postmark, if your app focuses on delivering and receiving
transactional emails, and their pricing makes sense to you - I have seen some
of their developer's posts and they know this stuff very well too.

I'd avoid some of the cheaper options, especially on transactional email
delivery - it's a big deal (sending people receipts, notify credit card
expiration, resetting password etc) and you want to stick with people who know
how to do this.. don't cheap out

------
FuzzyDunlop
To someone from the UK, 'Tealeaf Academy' implies that it's a school for
thieves.

Tealeaf being Cockney rhyming slang for 'thief'.

~~~
cglee
Seems appropriate since we let you steal our knowledge :)

disclaimer: I'm an instructor at Tealeaf Academy.

------
ScotterC
Surprised they didn't use a mailgun ruby wrapper
<https://github.com/HashNuke/mailgun>

~~~
knwang
The MailgunGateway class is kind of an application specific wrapper, with out
account info and only with the functions we need.

------
jvrossb
Good advice, we're going to try and do the same.

