Introduction
In a perfect world, your email service provider is flexible, responsive to your needs, knowledgeable of new technology, and cost effective. It is not a perfect world, though. Instead, working with an email vendor, or any vendor for that matter, can be frustrating as you negotiate contracts and customize service plans. Too often, the level of customer service exhibited during the initial sales process drops off after the contract is signed.
In times of frustration, the natural reaction is to look for a new provider; to start from scratch with a clean slate. Abandoning the vendor and moving to another bigger, faster, cheaper or closer provider is not always the best answer. There are more than one hundred Email Service Providers (ESPs) selling their services in the market today and all of them are on the hunt for new customers. Before jumping ship with your current ESP, a little planning can go a long way.
Consider these questions:
Why do you want to switch?
What risks are involved in switching?
What are your exact needs?
What kind of relationship do you want to have with them?
How should you conduct a search for a new ESP, if that is your ultimate choice?
Taking the time to evaluate your options will prevent making a snap decision and getting locked into an annual contract with a vendor that doesn't fit your needs or organizational culture.
Reasons that Justify Finding a New ESP
Since email is fast becoming the dominant form of communication with stakeholders, it is essential that your ESP provide you with quality features and even higher quality customer service. They are the experts of the emarketing industry so it is up to them to provide you with guidance when you want to ramp up your emarketing efforts and help you problem solve technological issues. Below are, what we call, decision points, factors that make it worth your while to consider finding a new ESP.
Decision Point 1: Shared IP Address. The bottom line is that you shouldn't share your IP address with any of your ESP's other clients because there is no distinction between the two organizations. Sharing IP addresses puts your reputation, and your email, at the mercy of another organization. Organizations don't get blacklisted, the IP associated with the organization does. In other words, if ABC Corporation is flagged as a spammer and you share their IP, you also share their punishment. If you don't know if you have a unique IP, ask your ESP and do it right now. Credible ESPs offer unique IP addresses as part of their service package while some charge extra for it. If they don't offer a unique IP your business is in an unnecessary position of risk and it is time to look for a new vendor.
Decision Point 2: Your ESP cannot handle the volume of email you send. If they can't accommodate the sheer volume of your lists and distribution totals, you should consider severing your relationship. Reliance on email as a communication medium will only increase and, presumably, so will your readership. If there is a problem with volume today, tomorrow the problem will be worse.
Decision Point 3: The ESP does not provide high-level features to create one-to-one campaigns. Personalization is an important component of emarketing. It is also one of the main reasons marketers rely so heavily on it. Without the ability to use dynamic content, surveys, unique landing pages, poll questions, and other advanced features, the impact your campaign makes suffers. Your ESP should not only have these features available, but be available to tutor you on how to maximize their use.
Decision Point 4: You cannot integrate with a third-party system. One of the most important features of emarketing is personalization that can be achieved by linking your customer database (and the data you have collected) with your distribution list. Being able to use the data you have collected from current and potential customers not only helps you create dynamic content they will respond to, it also shows them that the surveys and demographic information they submitted to you is being used for their benefit.
