The Whitelist

Email Deliverability Consultant’s Take on ESPs vs. Marketing Automation

For my latest blog for the Email Experience Council, I took off my email deliverability hat to tackle the issue of ESPs vs. marketing automation software. I am seeing that email service providers (ESPs) are moving more and more toward the marketing automation model.

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. And that evolution is beginning to close the gap between the ESP platform and the marketing automation platform.

“The evolution of the ESP is to be expected given the changing marketing landscape and shifting customer expectations. The further we move away from batch-and-blast and move toward one-to-one marketing, the more we have to take into account that one-to-one is not as simple as a really targeted and timely message. It means the platform by which it’s delivered too, for example via mobile or a social networking site.”
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If you haven’t yet downloaded our email marketing whitepaper on choosing an email service provider (ESP), or even if you have, be sure to listen in on September 16th as we partner with the Email Experience Council to bring you “You Don’t Need ESP to Choose an Email Service Provider.”

Marco Marini, our CEO, and Michael Kelly, our Director of Strategic Alliances, will present the in-depth and groundbreaking information released earlier this year in our email marketing whitepaper “Choosing the Right Email Service Provider: The top 20 factors to consider when shopping for a top tier ESP.” Presented Wednesday, September 16 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, the webinar is useful whether you’re shopping for a new email service provider or want to compare your current ESP to other email vendors.
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Aside from being one of the highest rated ESPs in the industry (and we as an email marketing vendor are delighted to represent them), Silverpop is also one of the biggest producers of email marketing whitepapers providers (and we as an email marketing vendor are delighted to represent them), but they are also a leading source of whitepapers on email best practices that are easily read, understood and acted upon.
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ClickMail. No, it’s not as glamorous as ghost busting, but we are proud to be the email marketing vendor clients can count on to deliver on time and on budget.

We recently did that for a federal credit union with more than 72,000 members worldwide and close to one billion dollars in assets. You can imagine how much email marketing an organization that size must do. They use email for transactional messages as well as to confirm new accounts and settings changes.
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Is your email marketing all alone? Shame on you. It should be keeping company with your other applications, namely your CRM and Web analytics and other internal data sources. Only by integrating your email marketing platform with these data sources can you access the information that enables intelligence, more relevance and therefore more email marketing ROI.
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“If you build it, they will come.” That famous line from the movie “Field of Dreams” seems to hold true for great whitepapers too, with a little variation: If you write it, they will notice.

Since releasing our newest whitepaper this month, “Choosing the Right Email Service Provider: The top 20 factors to consider when shopping for a top tier ESP,” hundreds of email marketers have downloaded it from our Web site, and wiped us out of our hard copies at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit. Now we’re getting recognition from noted email marketing experts too!
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Here’s a thought: Maybe email marketing is less about measuring the money made as ROI, but the relationship instead? Is the relationship worth more than the sale?

They say email marketing is the relationship medium, and that makes sense. Email is not a great tool for customer acquisition, but it is great for retention and lead nurturing. And retaining and nurturing are about relating. You might not be ready to buy right now, but if I stay in touch with you and keep providing you with useful information over time, you’ll get to know me, warm up to me, and choose me when you are ready to buy. I will have developed a relationship with you that paid off later.
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Relevance. Timing. Frequency. Subject line length. Email marketing involves many critical factors. But hard and fast rules about adhering to best practices don’t exist, despite all the reports and case studies that purport to have all the answers. A 35 character subject line might work for one type of email, while another does better with 55 characters. Some audiences respond well to weekly email promotions, while another balks at anything more frequent than monthly. And so it goes.
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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!