The Whitelist

Is it Time to Compare Email Marketing Services?

In this business, we find we’re approached by two different types of clients who shop for an ESP:

1) Those who haven’t used one yet because they’re using an internal solution.

2) Those who have but are looking to switch.

If you’ve been doing email in-house, you might get to a point when you’re ready to move your email marketing program to an email service provider (ESP) instead. Or if you’ve been working with an ESP, you might be ready to move to a different one.

How do you know when it’s time to compare email marketing services for an ESP or new ESP?

If you aren’t using an ESP and you’re wondering if it’s time to find one, you’ll know it’s time when you want to start implementing more sophisticated email marketing best practices, like A/B testing, segmentation or better analytics.

It’s time to compare email marketing services and find a new ESP when you’re scaling up and need more functionality. Sometimes an organization outgrows not only the way they’re doing email marketing, but the platform they’re using as well. Or maybe your upcoming marketing initiative requires add-ons your ESP doesn’t offer, like SMS, marketing automation or social integration. You may outgrow your ESP if you’d like to move to an integrated solution for Salesforce.com or Omniture. Or perhaps you want to start strategizing for social and be able to track the progress and results.

Have you found yourself nodding your head as you read this post and see the signs for knowing it’s time for a new ESP? Then it’s probably time to start shopping. And if it is time, we’re making it easy for you. We have two free, no-obligation tools to help you compare email marketing services and make an informed decision:

*  ClickMail Marketing’s 2011 Guide to Choosing an ESP

*  The ESPinator – an online ESP selection tool

Both are free for you to use. The guide you can download and the online tool takes just minutes to use. You’ll find them helpful resources as you start to compare email marketing services and choose a new ESP.

P.S. If you’re considering continuing to go it alone by building an in-house solution, read this great article our CEO published on build vs. buy in the Email Experience Council (EEC) blog in May. Definitely read that first.

Data to Gather Before You Switch ESPs

I’d love to tell you your current ESP relationship will last forever. Really I would. However, the reality is that you might outgrow the capabilities of an email service provider, or your in-house email list size could grow to where a different ESP would be more cost-effective. Or something else could change.

The point is, there might come a time when you are choosing a new ESP and you’ll have to make the switch.

If it were as easy as turning off a switch at the one ESP and flipping on the switch at the next, the transition would be mindless. However, it’s not that easy. Obviously, you’ll have the same ramp up time you did when you started with the last ESP, including ramping up a new IP address.

There are two types of data you’re going to want to get from the old and take to the new: your lists and your reports.

When you make the email service provider switch, remember the lists! List data is extremely important. Most of the time, ESPs will completely shut off your account when your contract expires, making it impossible for you to retrieve any data. That’s your in-house email list gone. That includes things like your in-house email list and your opt-out list.

To avoid this, we as an email marketing vendor recommend you have a process in place to move data to your new ESP at least two weeks before your account is shut off. If your data is integrated with a CRM, this might not be necessary.

We’ve also had clients who wanted reporting data as well as their list data. This is a smart email marketing best practice because it enables companies to keep a record of how their emails perform over time…especially to compare to the old email service provider to the new one. Once your account is shut down, that data is also lost. If your old ESP has the ability to produce .xls or .pdf files of this data, start compiling it at least a few weeks before your account is shut off.

You’ll have enough to keep you busy with the transition, ramping up and training. Make sure lost data isn’t a concern.

Compare Email Marketing Services With This Online Tool

Trying to compare email marketing services and starting to feel like it’s an apples to oranges comparison? That’s okay. It is an apples to oranges comparison! And of course all email marketing vendors are going to tell you their email marketing solution is the best fit for you…because they truly believe it is.

That’s why we built the world’s first online tool for comparing email marketing vendors and services. The ESPinator is web-based tool built to help you find the ESP that best suits your organization’s email marketing needs. You can use it to replace the RFP process or in addition to. You can also use it to evaluate your current ESP.

The Espinator is still in beta due to the diligence required in building a meticulously objective yet thorough tool. We have over a dozen top ESPs in the system right now, and will have at least 30 when we’re done. It takes a long time to add an ESP because of the vetting process. Each email service provider is scrupulously screened and processed to ensure the data we’re inputting into the selector tool is accurate. We’re not taking any ESP answers for granted! With this approach, we’re adding a new email service provider to the tool every couple of weeks.

Those currently in this ESP selection tool include ExactTarget, BlueHornet, Acxiom, e-Dialog, Responsys, Yesmail, WhatCounts and Lyris. Those included—and those we plan to include—cover the entire spectrum of email marketing solutions, from entry-level ESPs to sophisticated, top-tier ESPs.

Even if you’re not switching email service providers, you can use the Espinator to see if your current ESP is in the top three choices selected for you.

It’s an easy referral to make too, if you think your organization should be re-evaluating your current ESP but you’re lacking buy in. Simply send a link to your boss with a note saying it’s an interesting online tool, and might be worth a look.

The Espinator is vendor neutral, completely objective, fast and easy to use. Trying to compare email marketing services and wishing it was an apples to apples comparison? Now it is.

Try the Espinator right now.

The New 2011 ESP Guide Is Ready to Download and Help You Compare Email Marketing Services!

We’ve updated the ClickMail Marketing ESP guide and it’s ready to download and be put to use!

If you’re looking for a new ESP or wondering how your current one stacks up, this 2011 Guide to Choosing an ESP is a must guide for you.

Selecting the right ESP is more critical than ever as demands on email marketing grow and budgets for email marketing shrink. Plus email’s integration with other marketing channels deepens with every passing day. And you need to be keeping up with that integration, which requires ESPs that enable it.

So what’s new in the guide for 2011? Based on the changes we’ve made to the guide to update it for 2011, the key take away this year is engagement. Last year, we singled out integration as the key take away, and the ability of your ESP to integrate across new platforms and technologies continues to be important in 2011. But as the world gets ever more “social,” engaging your audience gets ever more critical.

The tools that lead to engagement are many, from segmenting and content that renders based on when an email is opened to tracking an email to social activity. Engagement is really the next level of relevance. Be relevant enough and you will engage.

Another way to engage is by sending content via the channel your audience wants to receive it through. For 2011, the two channels of focus are social and mobile. To help marketers move forward and to meet increasing demand, ESPs are integrating, buying or building solutions that tie email into these channels.

All things to consider as you shop for an ESP and use this guide.

We continue to use the term “ESP” but I highly doubt we will use it in next year’s guide. Terms like Engagement Marketing, Digital Marketing and Interactive Marketing platforms are being thrown around as ESPs continue to evolve their offerings and, even though email is the string that ties it together, the industry is moving toward relevant, interactive digital communications. It will be interesting to see what we name our guide in 2012!

Until then, we’re sticking with ESP. And this is the ESP selection guide that will help you choose. Choose wisely. Choose well.

Compare Email Marketing Services? The ESPinator Eliminates the Guesswork

There are over 100 email service providers (ESPs). And your ESP choice is critical. How well it performs, its impact on your email deliverability rate, the ease of use of the platform…the ESP you choose will directly affect your email marketing ROI. You can’t risk choosing just any ESP. It absolutely must be the right one for your business…and business objectives.

So how do you compare email marketing services objectively? How do you choose? Well, you can download our newly updated 2011 guide to choosing an ESP.

Or use the ESPinator , the first ever online tool designed to aid you in objectively selecting the right ESP for you.

ClickMail Marketing is unique among email marketing vendors and email deliverability consultants because we are completely vendor neutral as a reseller. We built the ESPinator—from the ground up—to give you the best results possible when you’re trying to compare email marketing services.

The ESPinator can save you money too by eliminating the need for a lengthy RFP process. Or use it to generate a shortlist for your RFPs.

To use it, all you do is answer a series of questions on a scale of 1 to 5. Using standard deviation techniques, the ESPinator ranks the ESPs according to your responses and displays the top three ESPs for you.

Trying to compare email marketing services? Try the ESPinator . It couldn’t be any easier to find your new ESP…and make the right choice.

After years of thought and planning, The ESPinator is now live.

What is the ESPinator?  Thank you for asking.  The ESPinator is an online system, used to choose the Email Service Provider that best suits the needs of a particular company.

Why did we build it?  Here at Clickmail Marketing, we’ve noticed the trend of most ESPs using the samed buzzwords, making similar claims, and generally dazzling the audience with MarketingSpeak.  It is neigh impossible for most people to separate the many ESP marketing promises from their functional realities.

By way of example, just about every ESP claims they can integrate everything seemlessly, but some do it much better than others.  One ESP may have built an elegant connector to a CRM system whereas another requires the use of a technical sledgehammer to make it ‘fit’.  For an email marketer to make a sound decision, a lengthy RFP process has been necessary.  No longer.

Clickmail used its in-depth knowledge of ESPs, stripped off the many layers of marketing lacquer, and judged each ESP on an apples-to-apples basis.  Over 200 questions and criteria were analyzed, weighed and rated.  The result is the ESPinator, a system designed to replace a long RFP process with an hour long questionnaire.

There are currently eight ESPs rated and loaded into the system: ExactTarget, BlueHornet, Acxiom, eDialogue, Responsys, Yesmail, WhatCounts, and Lyris; and we plan to add an additional 24 ESPs to the mix over the coming weeks.

Try it, you’ll like it.  Tell us what you think!

Compare Email Marketing Services

Stymied by all the email service providers? Confused by Email Service Providers (ESP) vs. marketing automation software? Frustrated by poor email deliverability? Not sure where to turn for creative that adheres to email marketing best practices?

Start here. You don’t need to spend your time and energy to compare email marketing services when we can do it for you. Yes, this is a self-serving blog post. But also a necessary one. At ClickMail, we are vendor neutral. And that’s something you need to know when you set out to compare email marketing services.
(more…)

When you’re trying to compare email marketing services, it’s easy to get confused. So many vendors, agencies, ESPs…whom can you trust? Where should you start?

Well, they say a third-party endorsement is the best kind, so here’s one for all of you out there trying to compare email marketing services. We recently got this nice testimonial via email, sent to our stellar Michael Kelly:
(more…)

Do you know how many email service providers (ESPs) there are? Over 100!

Do you know how many of them will give you the email marketing deliverability rate you want? Very few.

Choosing an ESP means entering into a long-term relationship. It’s costly and time-intensive to get the relationship started and up and running. And once you’ve made that commitment, getting out of it is even more costly and time-intensive if you decide to switch ESPs.
(more…)