Level of Service
It is important to remember that every implementation is different. Email marketing solutions are not “one size fits all”, and every product will not fit into every application. To find the solution that is right for you, you must take the time to research, test, and talk to the different ESPs. However, you should begin by deciding what your needs are so you choose the ESP that will help you achieve your long-term direct marketing goals.
The first thing you must determine is how much of the project you want to outsource. Are you looking to completely hand off the entire project to an outsourcer that will write, design, code, and deploy your campaigns? Do you also need them to manage your lists and track results? Or are you looking for a program that will allow you to create, deploy, track, and manage HTML email newsletters yourself? Knowing what services you want to outsource and which ones you want to perform in-house will help you develop a short-list of ESPs that fit.
To correctly determine your needs, you must first gauge the growth rate of your list. You might have 50,000 subscribers today, but next year you could have five times that amount. Knowing what your growth rate is will help you make accurate projections so you can find an ESP that will scale to your future needs, no matter how many emails you are sending per month.
Next, decide what the mission-critical priorities of your emails are. Do you want to send out a monthly email newsletter to your entire list or do you want to send out targeted campaigns to a segmented group? Will you personalize each email? Do you need help with deliverability or rendering issues? It is important to know what you want to accomplish with each campaign so you can select a product that will give you the tools you need to reach your goals. It is also important to be realistic about your capabilities and resources. If you want to send HTML campaigns but do not have programming skills, you will either need your IT department to program the emails for you, or you will have to find an ESP that offers a WYSIWYG HTML editor and pre-designed templates. Knowing what you can and cannot do yourself greatly impacts the feature set you will need from your ESP.
Finally, decide what features you need now, which ones you will need in the future, and which ones you will not use. Doing so will ensure that you do not end up paying for functionality that you are not using. For example, if you provide a niche product for a specific industry, the ability to produce dynamically driven emails might not be as important to you as it is for a company that provides several products over a wide range of industries. Defining the scope of your project will help you determine which ESPs offer the features you need while allowing you to eliminate those that are not a good fit. Remember, like all other newly implemented business processes, it is better to choose an ESP that allows you to start small and add more features as you become more comfortable with the technology.