The Whitelist

Email Service Providers vs. In-House Email Solutions?

As a value-added reseller of Email Service Providers and email-related services, we at ClickMail Marketing often think about what percentage of email marketers turn to advanced solutions providers to deliver their campaigns, and which firms continue to deliver their email marketing campaigns via in-house tools. A recent MarketingSherpa chart outlines these statistics, following a recent survey of more than 1,000 organizations.

After taking a glance at the chart, I have to say, we weren’t surprised. With the increasingly complex tactical requirements of email marketing, it shouldn’t be surprising that twice as many organizations use an advanced, versus a basic, Web-based solution to fulfill their ever changing and complex email marketing needs. Of the total organizations surveyed, about one-third of these use a full-service outsourced ESP. And B2C channel organizations as well as large organizations are much more likely to use an ESP. This makes sense because in both cases, there is undoubtedly greater scope and complexity of email initiatives, which requires the assistance of outsourced ESPs.

As subscribers become increasingly sophisticated, and the interactivity needs between marketing channels grow, it’s not surprising that there is a greater demand for comprehensive services and email marketing solutions. The evolution of the ESP from a simple emailing platform to a full-fledged, feature-rich offering is only natural given the changing landscape of marketing today. The increasing demand from organizations for these features is a clear validation for increasingly sophisticated tools, such as drip and triggered email streams and the integration of web analytics.

In order to stay on top of your game and ahead of the curve, consider employing the use of an ESP to help you with your email marketing program if you aren’t already doing so. And with over a dozen ESP systems in our portfolio, ClickMail (contact info) offers the nation’s largest selection of ESPs while staying vendor neutral. With a “try before you buy” policy, you’ll be sure to find the right system for your needs. We also provide continuing support and an array of services including email marketing expertise in areas from customization to strategy; integration to email deliverability and optimization. We live for this stuff! ClickMail will help you manage your online reputation and accurately measure your delivery rates, to achieve maximum ROI. We’re also there to give you email marketing expertise, allowing you to keep your campaigns cutting-edge while continuing to improve your overall email marketing strategy. Contact Clickmail today!

Compare Email Marketing Vendors With 2011 ESP Guide

“Your guide was useful in terms of keeping us aware of issues that we needed reminding about as we extend our use of email marketing. I must compliment your company on producing such a readable synopsis of the important issues. Many thanks and keep up the good work.”

The praise above comes from a recent user of our 2011 Guide to Choosing an ESP.  They had downloaded the ESP guide to help in their search as they sorted out their needs and possible choices among email marketing vendors.

We spend hours each year updating this annual ESP guide, ensuring the factors covered are the most timely and relevant for you, the email marketer, when sizing up ESPs and other email marketing vendors. It’s great to get the feedback that tells us we’re doing what we set out to do: creating a definitive resource.

Read more about the ESP guide or simply download it and put it to use. As the user above said in their praise, it is readable and it is a synopsis. In fact, it’s the most comprehensive, vendor neutral guide you’re going to find anywhere. It includes critical information like which factors you should consider when selecting an ESP, why they are important, and what to ask the ESPs. And it’s yours for the asking, no strings attached.

Where Should You Swim? When a Shared IP Pool Makes Sense

Come on in, the water’s fine…maybe. It depends on whether that “water” is your own pool or one you share. And by pool, we mean IP addresses.

As an email marketer, there are two routes you can go: You can pay for your own dedicated IP address that only your organization will use. Or you can spend less money and be part of a shared pool of IP addresses.

Typically, if you are a high volume sender, we as an email marketing vendor and deliverability consultant recommend that you purchase a dedicated IP.

If your sending volume is low or you’re new to email marketing, then you don’t really need a dedicated IP address yet. If your existing reputation is shot, you might consider a shared IP pool because the good established reputations of the other marketers as a whole will help yours. As our Director of Sales and Business Development Michael Kelly likes to say, “If you are not the cleanest kid in the pool, you might not want to be the only kid in the pool.”

There are drawbacks to being in the shared IP pool, however. For example, if you’re working hard to adhere to email marketing best practices and keep your online sending reputation clean, but another marketer in the shared pool has a bad day, the complaints generated could cause the IP address to be blocked, which, in turn affects your email deliverability rate.

If you need help deciding whether a dedicated or shared IP address will work better for you and your implementation of email marketing best practices and email deliverability best practices, reach out to ClickMail. We’re happy to take a look at your particular situation and make a recommendation.

Can’t Make It to Vegas? Attend This Online Email Marketing Summit Instead

Keeping up with email marketing best practices and common email delivery problems can be a lot of work. There are email newsletters to read, email marketing blogs to scan, email marketing conferences to attend…

So if you can’t make it to Las Vegas next week to get your free Email Health Check from ClickMail, one of the email marketing vendors exhibiting at the event, you might want to attend part or all of this EEC online email marketing summit instead.

With topics like…

• Passports to Email: A Global Perspective of Email & Privacy Laws
• Email Optimization – Your Customers Take It Personally
• Email to Lead in 10 Days
• Email Trends for 2011

…and four more to choose from, you’ll definitely learn more about email marketing best practices. You can register for each individually so you can attend as many or as few as you want.

Of course, we’d rather see you wandering among the booths of email marketing vendors at Email Summit ’11 in Las Vegas so we can talk email deliverability and email marketing best practices in person. But we also realize not every budget, job or home situation allows that kind of travel. So we’re happy to tell you about this free online option instead!

Learn more about the free online email marketing summit.

How to Improve Your Email Marketing Program in Six Months or Less

It’s the beginning of a new year. Advice is flying at you from all directions. Predictions too. 2011 this and 2011 that… It can be a little overwhelming for an email marketer, especially in light of the growth of social media and all the buzz about content marketing!

At the risk of tossing even more advice your way, we want to suggest you review some of your email tactics. But rather than overwhelm you, we’ll make it easy on you: Here’s a six-month plan for improving your email marketing program.

We’ve chosen six often overlooked email marketing factors. Simply do one of these tasks below per month between now and this summer. Or if you’re on the fast track, make it a six-week plan, or even a six-day plan if you’re super ambitious. The point is, break it down into smaller pieces and you’ll be more likely to do it.

Task 1: Review your welcome message. Does it reflect your brand or is it boring and generic? Do you confirm what you promised, meaning if you’ve promised a monthly newsletter, does your welcome message confirm that? Are you offering any special rewards to people who sign up? Are you selling in your welcome email? Are you tracking the results of your welcome email over time? Choose one factor of your welcome email and run an A/B split test on it.

Task 2: Review how often you’re sending out your newsletter. If you’ve been sending out your email newsletter on the same schedule for over a year now, you might want to reconsider it based on results. What does the trending show, an increasing or decreasing open rate or is the open rate holding steady? How about click throughs? Do you have a preference center that lets subscribers choose how often they want to hear from you? Have you done any testing to see if more or less often gets better results?

Task 3: Review your transactional emails, including your confirmation and shipping emails: Give them the same once over as your welcome emails.

Task 4: Review your email design. Use a tool like eDesign Optimizer from email marketing vendor Pivotal Veracity to make sure your email marketing renders correctly in all email clients.

Task 5: Review your list building efforts. What are you currently doing to grow your in-house email list? Is there anything not working? Can you add one more technique this month, like adding an email sign to your company’s Facebook page?

Task 6: Find a reputable email marketing vendor to partner with when you need a little extra help. The time to find an email deliverability consultant or technical services agency isn’t when you need them. Find them when you have time to do your homework and make a good choice.

This is a doable list, right? And in six months, weeks or days, you’ll likely be seeing better results from your email marketing!

Get the Best of Both Worlds: Try the Top ESPs for Free

Would you use an ESP if it were free? 

That’s a new option for the SMB market now, according to an article in DM News.

Titled “ESPs turn to ‘freemium’ models to help upsell budget-conscious businesses,” the article by Shahnaz Mahmud describes the effort on the part of email service providers to woo small business with free options in the hopes that they’ll later decide it’s worth paying to use the email marketing platform.

Another option for any business, large or small, is ClickMail’s 30-day free trial offer. You can test drive any of the dozen ESPs we resell for 30 days for free. It’s just like the new freemium models…but better. How? Because you still don’t have to shop around. Even if you’re going to try the ESP for free, first you have to find the ones who will offer you a free option. Do you have the time for that? Then you try them out and either like them or not. Just because you’re getting it for free does not mean it’s the best ESP for you!

A smarter choice is working with ClickMail as your email marketing vendor to help you narrow down your search. Then you can test drive for free the ESPs that are a good fit for you.

In email as in anything else, you get what you pay for. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s good. For you, anyway.

Get the best of both worlds: try ESPs for free, but try only those that are going to work for you long term.

Email Deliverability Consultant and Marketing Vendor Wins High Praise From New Client

Sometimes we work too hard.

As an email deliverability consultant and one of the email marketing vendors vying for your attention when you’re looking for an ESP, ClickMail Marketing has been a rapidly growing company. As such, we sometimes overlook letting our email marketing customers tell our story for us. And we all know a testimonial is much more effective than a sales pitch! With that in mind, we quote Barney Stanner, President of JobsInSports.com, who recently commended ClickMail with this glowing testimonial:

“While attending the 2010 Email Marketing Summit in Miami I met with all of the ESP’s determined to find the one that could take the JobsInSports.com email program to the next level. As it turned out, one company, ClickMail Marketing, gave me access to all the others with a lower cost as a result of their purchasing power.

“Since hiring ClickMail Marketing, the JobsInSports.com email program has taken a step up in professionalism, deliverability, conversion and tracking. As our program grew to levels beyond our initial projections, ClickMail was very willing to scrap our original agreement and renegotiate for a more profitable partnership. Most importantly, CMM bends over backward to supply support and training.

“We fully endorse the team from ClickMail Marketing and encourage other marketers to take advantage of their experience and purchasing power.”

Could your email marketing program use a boost in professionalism, deliverability, conversion or tracking? Make 2011 the year you move to ClickMail to guide you to the right ESP choice for you, improve your email deliverability and up your email marketing ROI.

Whether you’re searching for email deliverability tools, subject line best practices, or better tracking, we can help.

There’s no such thing as the best ESP. But there is such a thing as the best ESP for you. That’s why we as an email marketing vendor resell over a dozen ESPs, to ensure we match our clients with the best choice for their needs.

Below is post 4 in our series of 5 posts on the ESPs we resell and why…because the best ESP is the one that’s best for you. Maybe it’s Silverpop… 

One of the Best ESPs: Silverpop
Silverpop is one of the top five ESPs we offer as an email marketing vendor and Silverpop agency partner in part because their reporting is so good. They provide very actionable data, enabling email marketers to understand online behavior and increase the relevancy of their marketing.

Another strength is their APIs. Silverpop is unusual among ESPs in that you can try out APIs in a test environment. This ESP has also introduced a Send Time Optimization (STO) feature which lets marketers deliver emails at a particular time for a particular user, for timely relevancy in the inbox.

Could Silverpop be the best ESP for you? Find out.

Why turn to ClickMail to help you choose your ESP? Read the answer here.

There’s no such thing as the best ESP. But there is such a thing as the best ESP for you. That’s why we as an email marketing vendor resell over a dozen ESPs, to ensure we match our clients with the best choice for their needs.

Below is post 3 in our series of 5 posts on the ESPs we resell and why…because the best ESP is the one that’s best for you. Maybe it’s Lyris…

One of the Best ESPs: Lyris
Lyris is like an all-in-one ESP. We like to call it a unified marketing interface. Because Lyris strategically added capabilities to their offering by acquiring different companies, today it’s the ESP for the email marketer who wants everything in one place. We offer Lyris to the email marketer who wants the functionality of an ESP with built-in clickstream and web analytics, keyword management, plus social media integration and a content management system.

This integration gives you as the email marketer access to everything you’d like to do in one solution, for greater efficiency and time savings.

Could Lyris be the best ESP for you? Find out.

Why turn to ClickMail to help you choose your ESP? Read the answer here.

There’s no such thing as the best email service provider (ESP). But there is such a thing as the best ESP for you. That’s why we as an email marketing vendor resell over a dozen ESPs, to ensure we match our clients with the best choice for their needs.

Below is post 2 in our series of 5 posts on the top ESPs we resell and why…because the best ESP is the one that’s best for you. Maybe it’s ExactTarget…

One of the Best ESPs: ExactTarget
As and email service provider compared to others, ExactTarget has robust APIs and integration capabilities. For us as an email marketing vendor, one of ExactTarget’s differentiators is Salesforce.com integration. They use a different methodology than other ESPs: They are the only ESP that writes into Salesforce.com as the single database of record, for much tighter integration.

As for the APIs, most marketers put their heads in their hands when you mention API calls because that typically means going to the IT department then waiting six to 12 months for something to get done. Not with ExactTarget. Their API calls are so strong–and we know them so well–that we can get system calls working very quickly.

They’ve also built out a technology-based (as opposed to people-based) platform that enables them to support thousands of customers, while most ESPs support hundreds, so you never have to worry about this ESP not scaling to handle the load!

Could ExactTarget be the best ESP for you? Find out.

Why turn to ClickMail to help you choose your ESP? Read the answer here.