The Whitelist

With over 150 email service providers (ESP) to choose from, how can you possibly select the best one for your organization, or be confident that your current ESP is the best solution for you? ESPs differ from each other in many ways, so you as the email marketer are challenged to make apples-to-apples comparison.
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Cooler than Fonzie? Perhaps not, but certainly more relevant.

The official name of our latest white paper is called Choosing the Right Email Service Provider: The top 20 factors to consider when shopping for a top tier ESP, but around the office, we call it Our Latest White Paper. It’s popular, we ran out of copies at today’s Em@il Summit in Miami, but it has yet to land on eBay for the simple fact that it can be downloaded right here.

At today’s session on HowTo run an effective ESP RFP,  presenter Kara Trivunovic singled ClickMail Marketing out as an example of a company that can take the pain out of choosing the right ESP for you.  With that endorsement, we passed-out every copy of Our Latest White Paper we had with us.

Click here to download your very own copy!

Kara Trivunovic  – email strategist extraordinare — gave a great presentation at today’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Miami.  The subject: how to run an effective RFP when choosing an Email Service Provider.

After the jump,  her Top Ten list of things to keep in mind: (more…)

Tap tap tap…is this mike on?

Clickmail’s CEO Marco Marini as well as email marketing guru Michael Kelly are on the ground in Miami.  We’ll be liveblogging throughout the entire conference, taking and posting notes so you don’t have to!

If you have any questions or just want to sync-up give us a tweet !

Hot off the press, Clickmail and ExactTarget declare their love and admiration for one another.  We’re proud to have reached Gold Status with ExactTarget; and they’re pretty darn happy, too.

Is your email marketing ROI everything you wish it was? If not, you might want to think about your email delivery platform. If you’re using an in-house email marketing solution or a lower-end email service provider, you could be sabotaging your own email marketing efforts.

A top-tier email service provider (ESP) might cost a little more, but, as we’ve pointed out in another email marketing blog post, the increased revenue more than makes up for the increased cost.
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One great thing about email marketing is that it is not restricted by a passport, customs or a travel budget. If you are ready for your email marketing to transcend borders, you should be sure your email service provider is ready too. What impact will international email marketing have on your choice of email provider?

You may already be email marketing to a global audience without really thinking about it or planning for it, but as the economy goes global, you might want to think ahead about the ramifications of international email marketing.
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You started with an entry-level ESP (email service provider) because at the time, it was all you needed for your basic email marketing. But now your list has grown, along with your knowledge of what’s capable with email marketing. How do you know when it’s time to upgrade? It’s time to move up to a more robust ESP when you want:

• To segment
• API integration
• To integrate to SalesForce.com or another CRM or a web analytics tool
• More sophisticated reporting
• Event triggered emails
• Drip marketing
• Better throughput (deliverability) because your list has grown in quantity

In the world of ESPs, you get what you pay for. Make sure your ESP keeps pace with your email marketing needs.

Many email marketers enter the email marketing fray with an entry level ESP (email service provider). It makes sense when you’re starting out. You don’t need much functionality, your in-house list is small, and your budget might be tight.

Then time goes by, your email marketing gets more sophisticated (or you want it to, at least). Your list grows. And you start to pay more attention to your email marketing ROI. That’s when it’s time to think about moving up to a top tier ESP and here’s why: A lower deliverability rate can mean you’re leaving money on the table.

Speaking of tables, the one below shows the impact on your ROI of using an entry level ESP vs. a top tier one. Say you have list of 100,000 names, your widget sells for $25 each, and your conversion rate is 3%. As you can see below, even with the higher cost per email with the top tier ESP, the increase in emails delivered-and therefore sales made-more than covers that additional cost. With this example, you’re still $9280 ahead.