Are your marketing emails getting hog tied by SPAM filters? Is your lil’ doggy the only one reading them? Do you even know? Many companies choose to handle the creation and distribution of marketing emails internally, but many are uninformed or under-informed about the consequences of the methods they use to send them. From Outlook to enterprise solutions, we’ll give you a round up of marketing Email Service Providers (ESP’s), and steer you toward the sharp shooters.

Outlook
Sharp Shooter Rating:

Pros

• Free
• Comes from your actual email address, which may help you get through some kinds of SPAM filters (though other SPAM issues can be caused – see below).
• Directly linked to your contact list.

Cons

• No metrics = no way to evaluate number of delivered emails or success of email campaign.
• Most email systems have limits to the number of emails you can send per hour before causing company-wide email lock-downs.
• You’re in danger of getting your company’s email server on a SPAM blacklist which would hurt deliverability of email for the entire company.
• Unless you have instructions for unsubscribing in every email, you could be in violation of CAN-SPAM Laws.
• List management (cleaning bounces and erasing duplicates) must be done manually and is very time consuming. If list management is not done well, you risk increasing your SPAM rating.

Round Up
Though Outlook seems like a “no cost” solution, the complete lack of metrics, the increased risk to your company’s email systems and the increased personnel time may make this the least cost effective solution of all. If you still chose to send marketing emails this way, please read this article with tips on best practices for sending Marketing Emails through Outlook.

Constant Contact
Sharp Shooter Rating:

Pros

• Cheapest Email Service Provider (ESP) Available (starts out at $15/month).
• Additional discounts for non-profits and pre-pay.
• Access to detailed, real-time metrics and reports.
• Can easily upload email lists from an Excel document.
• Can create multiple groups for managing your audience list.
• Automatically cleans duplicates.
• Uses HTML templates and has set of pre-made templates with an easy-to-use interface for entering content.
• Automates Unsubscribes.
• Uses their own servers which they have a team working to keep on whitelists.
• Sends to each email address individually so no risk of others getting access to the rest of your list.
• Has the option to personalize each email. (e.g. Dear [first name],).
• If you have the resources to create an HTML version of your email, you can copy and paste the code into the system.

Cons

• Because any Joe with a Hotmail address can create a Constant Contact account, their servers do not have the best SPAM ratings. They do shut down abusive accounts fairly quickly and they have staff dedicated to keeping their servers on whitelists, but some ISP’s block Constant Contact out of hand and there is almost nothing you can do to get your emails delivered to those recipients, even if they have added your address to an “approved” list.
• The templates offered by Constant Contact are, for the most part, ugly. They can be hard to customize in frustrating ways.
• The templates they offer all have a Constant Contact logo in the footer that cannot be removed without paying to have a custom footer created.
• Lacks some features of more expensive services (see below).

Round Up
Constant Contact is so inexpensive and such a huge upgrade over sending through Outlook that there is absolutely no excuse for sending emails through Outlook. There are however, some areas that could use significant improvement and if you can afford something above the absolute cheapest solution, we suggest you look into some of the ESP’s below. Constant Contact is a great way to ease a nervous boss/board into the realm of ESP’s with little cost investment. Once they get addicted to the metrics, you can usually convince them to upgrade to a better solution.

Small to Mid-Sized Business Targeted ESP’s
Sharp Shooter Rating:

Pros

• All the pros of Constant Contact (except a bit more expensive)
• Costs are reasonable and based on usage. Some investment to set up, but typically, a relatively low cost of entry (Under $1,000).
• Emma Email Marketing, Astek’s chosen ESP, and similar ESP’s are more selective about their clients than Constant Contact which means they have much better reputation with SPAM filters and this increases your deliverability rate significantly.
• Most ESP’s at this level automatically clean bounces. Hard bounces (no such address) after one bounce and soft bounces (mailbox full) after three consecutive bounces. This is a HUGE time saver and helps improve deliverability rates significantly.
• Most allow you to create personalized emails that go out automatically based on a date or activity, (E.g. Happy Birthday, Thank you for your donation, etc.)
• Most allow moderate to advanced API Integration.
• Most will build a custom template for your company.

Cons

• ESP’s at this level have limits to their integration with customer management solutions for automated list segmentation by past behavior or purchases.
• Recurring costs start out comparable to Constant Contact, but since most ESP’s at this level charge by use instead of a flat monthly rate, companies who send many emails a month can see significant increase in cost. However, companies that send out less than once a month can actually reduce costs.

Round Up
The increased deliverability rates alone should be worth the extra investment. Sometimes as much as 3-5% higher than Constant Contact.

Though we have an obvious preference for our vendor, Emma (obviously, that’s why we work with them), there are dozens of options at this level, because it really is the sweet spot for most small to mid-sized companies. Each ESP has their own “thing”:

• Emma allows us to set up customizable templates for our clients which can then be populated with content by the client directly or by our staff. This gives us hands-on access that meets our needs very well.
• MailChimp has a high level of API integration and is generally very innovative with their features.
• ReachMail, iContact and many others each have their own set of special features.
• If you have something in particular you are looking for in an ESP, feel free to email us at ePiphany@astekweb.com and we’ll share what we know.

Enterprise Level ESP’s
Sharp Shooter Rating:

Pros

• All pros of previous systems (except cost)
• Highly customizable with robust special features
• Integration with customer and sales management systems
• Easy, sophisticated segmentation for evaluating content, send time and other factors
• Advanced reporting features

Cons

• Cost is the biggest con to this level of ESP’s. Cost of entry and ongoing fees are often high.
• Set up of these systems tend to be fairly intense and most companies would need to hire a consultant (like Astek) to set up and integrate it with their online sales tool. Though, after set up, typically the creation and sending of marketing emails can be handled internally with an employee with minimal HTML skills.

Round Up
Companies who need this level of Email Marketing tend to be focused on direct sales or have lists with tens of thousands of emails. If this describes your company, you should probably be investing in this type of ESP. Be sure to pick a system that integrates well with your CRM software. The SalesForce -ExactTarget partnership has been well-reviewed in our research.

This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter | Other ePiphany Articles

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Katie Hawkey Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Social Media, Web