There is a variety of email marketing service providers (ESPs) out there and it does not take very long to see that even though their offers are all different they all do essentially one thing: put data and creative together to deploy. The less obvious difference between all these platforms is the way they approach the problem in the back end; and unsurprisingly this is rarely part of their sales pitches.
Many advise looking at the features, such as triggers and dynamic content, or the support, the additional services, the level of reporting and pricing; and whilst these should not to be ignored, they should not be your main focus when selecting an ESP. Indeed you want to know that you will be able to do the dynamic content you've planned or that hidden costs will not cause you to exceed your budget. Start from there, we all need to stick to a budget, so eliminate solutions that are not in your price range. Now let's face it, what is left is not much more manageable than it was before, and then, there is no shortcut, if you want to make the right decision: Write down your plan for email marketing over the next year.
Start with the Price
"Taking up an ESP is not like choosing a meal, it's more like choosing a car." You will need to live with the decision you make for at leas a year, or two. To properly evaluate your tool, it is essential to have a clear understanding of what needs to be achieved with it. Often companies trust sales promises on the ease of integration, only to find, when the time comes to actually implement it, that they are an exception. Most businesses are in this position today without even realising it and suffer from added costs and resources needed to manage their email program when these could have been made easy by a different tool. You should not have to bend your business around to suit your email program and this is what most companies have to do today due to an inappropriate understanding of their own needs.
Then Functionality
As mentioned before, there are two factors to consider: data and creative handling. To ensure your tool nothing but an asset to reaching your goals, it is necessary to plan not only what you want to achieve with email marketing, but how you would like to achieve it. All ESPs can handle data, much fewer will be a match for the way your business handles data. All ESPs can handle an templates, much fewer will allow you to tailor, and automate to the level you are expecting in an efficient way according to your needs.
Plan What and How
Your goal might be to create a better subscriber lifecycle, and any sales representative will rightfully tell you their tool can handle that. But your plan to achieve it might include automating a send-out with a monthly FTP upload of data and a conditional dynamic email based on numeric fields that could be blank; and with this in mind you are more suited to distinguish which tool will give you the least amount of work.
In conclusion, much like everything, ESPs work best when used as intended; this should not mean you need to work harder to accommodate it. ESPs compete against one another based on price and functionality. However, before buying into the latest functionality such as social media integration, be very clear that this is what your marketing strategy campaign actually requires. Define what you want and how you will achieve it. This will empower you to truly evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each ESP.
I now run a company specialised in advising companies on email marketing, called ImpartialMail. We take great pride in the service we offer of selecting ESPs for our clients. We offer impartial expert email marketing advice and services to small and medium sized companies mainly in the UK.
Not a marketing agency, not a consulting company, we like to call it: "Hands-on Consulting"
We are not just another email marketing agency, ImpartialMail strives to empower businesses over email marketing service providers through impartial expert advice and services.
Greg Fournier
Managing Director
ImpartialMail Ltd.
Expert Email Marketing Advice
http://www.impartialmail.com
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