Adaptable
Memorable
Universal
The results speak for themselves:

– Client from financial institution
360-degree email marketing expertise
There are so many moving parts and skills needed to do email marketing well. When you work with us, you’ll benefit from an entire team of experienced email marketing specialists, including strategists, campaign managers, designers and developers. We’ve been helping organisations create email campaigns that resonate with audiences and build connection since 2006. Whether your campaigns are internal or external, we’ll advise on best practices and use our blend of creative and technical skill to help you create emails that drive action.
Our Approach
High levels of accuracy, efficiency and creativity allow us to work at a very fast pace. This is important in an industry where tight deadlines and last-minute changes are the norm! We want our clients to feel a sense of certainty when working with us, so our approach is process driven. We’ve established a campaign creation process for our clients that makes the entire experience more organised and transparent. It also enables our team to be on top of their game.
Founded in 2006
2006 was the year when the seeds of the Cantaloupe Digital story were planted. A lover of marketing and technology, Founder Melaina Gross noticed people were struggling to design their marketing emails. She realised there was a real need for an email design service that would also help businesses adopt best practices and choose the right platforms.
An idea that was present from the very beginning was the ability to work remotely. Melaina was a new mother at the time and didn’t want to miss any of her son’s milestones, so remote working was a natural fit. But an unexpected benefit of having this as a standard for Cantaloupe was that physical location wasn’t a barrier to recruiting talented team members. Cantaloupe could literally source team members from anywhere in the world.
Fast forward to 2020, and Cantaloupe’s team is the secret to its success. It’s an expert collective of people who are equally committed to each other, and their craft.
What’s in a name?
– Cantaloupe –
Pronounced like Antelope in the US and [KAN] + [TUH] + [LOOP] in Britain. But also spanspek in South Africa – ok that’s a completely different word (meaning the same of course) but you start to understand why we love this adaptable and dynamic fruit and how it represents so much of what we do.
Meet the team
We’re a virtual collective of experienced email marketing specialists. We love working as a team and our culture of communication is one of the key ingredients in our secret sauce.
Melaina Gross
Founder
Melaina is the founder and director of Cantaloupe Digital. A self-confessed email geek – she’s helped premium brands smash their goals through better email marketing. When she isn’t talking email deliverability, engagement rates, and email design frameworks, you’ll find her researching the latest digital marketing trends or enjoying a run through the streets of Mossel Bay.
Thys Feldtmann
Senior Email Designer and Campaign Manager
Thys joined our team in February 2018 and we call him our email sensei as he’s the master of everything HTML, data and email related. When he isn’t sweating to find a solution for the latest Outlook quirk, he can be found in a card or boardgame battle with his wife and kids, or reading the latest fantasy novel.
Tessa MacTaggart
Creative Director
Tessa’s been creating beautiful designs – out of what seems nothing at times – and coding emails for Cantaloupe Digital almost since before there was a world wide web. Sometimes, when she takes a break from digital wizardry, she lets her fingers do the magic in her garden. At the end of a long day, you’ll find her relaxing at the beach with her family.
Rob Tarlton
Designer
Rob entered the Cantaloupe cyber office at the end of 2018. Like all the other team members, he has some technical clout with code and digital authoring, but his passion lies in design. On weekends you’ll find him on mountain trails in and around Cape Town, or at home preparing something delicious to eat.
Kristie Botha
Digital Designer
Kristie joined the team in April 2015 and shares an office with Tessa (when not in lockdown). Kristie enjoys yoga to kickstart her day. She’s sometimes referred to as the female Flash Gordon as she can get a job out so quickly, it almost doesn’t seem that her fingers touch the keyboard. When she isn’t imitating superheroes, she likes to slow down and spend quality time with her family.
Robyn Haird
Operations Manager
In August 2019, Robyn’s entry into the Cantaloupe team started with a request for assistance with a monthly report. She’s fondly known as ‘The Analyst’, which says it all. Her love of graphs, data, order and visualisation inevitably led to her becoming the go-to person for Q&A and email testing. When she isn’t fiddling around with numbers, she’s exploring her surroundings in the Cape or snuggles in with a good book. As George R.R. Martin said, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.”
Cameron Jenkins
Email marketer
Cameron is a technical engineer who loves new ideas and exploring new possibilities which started his marketing passion. In his spare time you’ll find him exploring his creative side through various music-related endeavours.