In the early days of email, online marketers would happily shoot a thousand arrows in the hopes of hitting a lone channel long since overrun by spam and irrelevant marketing messages, marketers have turned to advanced techniques and to ensure their messages are delivered, anticipated and welcomed by recipients. In order to reach customers today, careful use strategies and tactics that include:
-demographic and behavioral segmentation,
-dynamic personalization, -campaign automation,
-lifecycle and integrated marketing, -email reputation and authentication systems, and
-list, deliverability, permission and frequency management.
Sound complex? It is. For help meeting the channel's unique challenges and opportunities, many companies are turning to firms for their email services. But choosing an email service provider, or ESP, can be a complicated undertaking of its requires care.
Why Your Choice Matters
Email is one of the most complex vendor decisions a large-enterprise marketer is likely to face. Unlike many other services marketers, email services should never be bought on a spot or job-by-job basis for three major reasons. First, reputation email deliverability. Having your email hop from one vendor to the next means you are never in the same place long positive reputation, and the major ISPs are not in the habit of giving unknown emailers the benefit of the doubt. To your email must come consistently from the same vendor (and the same IP address) over an extended period of time. IP will be built over a matter of months and, given good practices, your deliverability potential will reach its peak after steady mailing.
The second reason that should drive a long-term email vendor decision is technical integration. Many of the more advanced, lifting email marketing techniques like automated campaigns and lifecycle marketing require a much richer degree of data than simple batch-and-blast marketing has in the past. More data needs to be passed more often, and in some cases instantaneously (think receipts and alerts). Once campaigns of this nature are set up, it becomes difficult and impractical vendor to vendor, so selecting the right partner from the start is essential.
Lastly, your customer data is potentially the most valuable asset your company owns. Who can you trust to protect and that value? Because your email marketing vendor will play an integral role in the communication between you and your consideration needs to be given to the reputation, integrity and technical expertise of your vendor. Will they be there tomorrow needs? Can their product development keep up with the rapid changes in the email marketing landscape?
So, Where to Begin?
Before you can look for an email service provider, you must first understand the current state of your email marketing must know what you need to accomplish now and in the foreseeable future. This means establishing a business case, budget, and being ready to proceed as soon as you can select a vendor.
Once you are ready to communicate with a vendor, be honest about your needs avoid attempting to cover every possible solution you can imagine and, instead, go deep on the features you know you need today and in the next 12-14 months whether a vendor offers your required features, but at how well they are implemented. And, rather than relying on what
a feature or how exciting it sounds, make sure it can do what you expect and that it's actually something you will disappointed later.
Also make sure you are confident of a vendor's ability to meet your current and foreseeable requirements the last thing do is start all over again a few months down the road because the vendor you have chosen can't keep up with your growing needs.
Avoid Common Pitfalls
Companies coming from an in-house solution or another ESP may make some common mistakes in the vendor selection process, such as soliciting proposals without knowing exactly what they hope to accomplish, and/or not supplying vendors with enough information to give highly-customized responses. In these instances, vendors must make assumptions or supply generic answers, which can lead to email marketing programs that are more defined vendors' answers than companies' actual needs.
