How Grain Connect transformed its email marketing with Zoho Campaigns to drive growth

The Company

Grain Connect is a broadband provider delivering high-speed internet services to consumers and businesses across the North of England. Headquartered in Carlisle, UK, the company stands out in the telecom industry for its transparent pricing, flexible contracts, and future-ready fibre optic infrastructure.

"We are an alternative network, which means we don't use British Telecom's infrastructure—we build our own," says Richard Fletcher, Chief Information Officer at Grain Connect. "Owning the infrastructure allows us to pass on cost savings to our customers with competitive pricing and unique service offerings."

With a strong presence in Northern England and the Midlands, this tech-forward ISP is on a mission to connect even more communities across the entire UK. So how did it gain traction in a market dominated by industry giants? With a little help from Zoho and implementation partner Creative Analysis.

The challenge

In 2021, Grain launched a £75 million investment initiative with the goal of reaching 500,000 premises and growing its customer base to over 40,000.

When Richard Fletcher joined the company that same year, he was tasked with unifying its fragmented tech stack. At the time, the team relied on a mix of platforms including Infusionsoft CRM, Zapier, DocuSign, QuickBooks, SendGrid, PowerBI, and LastPass.

Grain's 200 employees span field engineering and head office functions, including finance, customer support, tech support, and IT—all of which needed streamlined, integrated systems.

The solution

"Previously, we used Infusionsoft to send all our marketing emails," Fletcher says. "Since moving to Zoho One, we now use Zoho Campaigns for all our email marketing."

One of the biggest challenges for Grain's marketing team was keeping up with the changing status of premises during broadband infrastructure rollouts. For instance, cables might be laid, but the network might not yet be live—making messaging tricky.

With Zoho Campaigns, Grain sends highly personalized messages to customers based on their premises' statuses—ranging from "Coming Soon!" to "We're Live" notifications. This dynamic targeting ensures the right message reaches the right customer at the right time.

Benefits and ROI

Grain developed a custom segmentation module integrated with Zoho Campaigns, enabling precise targeting based on each property's service status. Status stages include:

• Coming Soon
• Work Started
• Network Live
• Ready For Service

When a property moves to "Ready For Service," a workflow triggers email and SMS notifications that prompt customers to book installations or sign up online.

Grain also uses behavior-based workflows. For instance:

• If an email is opened, Zoho Campaigns sends a follow-up with a different message.
• If it's not opened or the customer hasn't converted, another tailored follow-up is sent.
• SMS reminders are sent to new customers who haven't booked installations yet.

These workflows enable Grain to re-target and engage users during monthly marketing campaigns effectively.

Looking forward​

Fletcher chose Zoho as a long-term software solution built to scale with Grain's rapid growth. He also prioritized a lasting relationship with a Zoho partner who understood their evolving needs. "I'd definitely recommend Zoho—we've had a great experience—and we'll continue working with Creative Analysis," he says.

In the time to come, Grain Connect would like to launch a customer portal in Zoho Desk for ticket tracking and pilot Zoho Assist for remote router configuration. There are also plans to explore Zoho Contracts and Zoho Learn. With an eye on continuous innovation, Grain Connect is paving the way for a smarter, more connected UK.