Email Vendor Selection Tips 02/02/12

It seems like online retailers have evolved far more quickly than the email service providers have been able to keep pace with. From what I could tell, the level of service provided catered only to the weekly newsletter requirements from days of yore. Up until recently, the systems on offer had not been ramped up to properly cope with more frequent sending that is now typically once or more per day. After multiple failures, we naturally seeked out alternative vendors.

The first thing to consider is: Are you dealing with an email marketing professional or a salesperson? I’ve sat down with the Asia Pacific director of one vendor who through the loudness of his voice tried to convince me that one of his competitors we were trialling was a bad decision. He went on to boast that his firm had recently taken a large client away from them, but then stopped short of actually giving me a name so I could do I reference check. I called bullshit.

What makes vendor selection especially tricky is when the provider you are planning on leaving makes 25th hour appeals citing the error of your ways, that the competitor your going to is worse.  To the untrained eye, the anecdotal evidence they provide along with their impassioned appeal to save their commission may cause you to sway your vote or at the very least, cause undue anxiety. And yet, like presidential candidates, they continue to make promises in their sales pitches and then proceed to constantly under-deliver (no pun intended.)

I’ve seen startups not 2 years out of their garage build sophisticated internal email marketing systems and at the same time, i’ve seen $200 million dollar organizations with archaic email systems that require new subscribers to be added manually each day.  What it comes down to is having the right people in your organization who can make informed and objective decisions. For any  eCommerce player, this means you need a team of smart people who understand how to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the internet. As obvious as that sounds, it is often neglected with people of zero relevant skill being allowed to make high-impact decisions. Think about it. Your email database is for all intents and purposes the life-blood of your online business. Try putting a dollar value on it and the cost of its mismanagement by your vendor, or by internal stakeholders. Unlike Warren Buffet won’t invest in anything he does not understand, business owners should be hiring people smarter than them – experts in their niche, to add value rather than Joe Bloggs to whom they can spread the workload.

When you’re picking a new email vendor, make sure you know what you want and that your prospective new partner ticks most of the boxes. Here’s a few points, in no particular order, to start you of:

• Does the UI offer productivity gains?  Can email marketers get their campaigns prepared faster?
• Does the infrastructure support your volume of email? And considering a)your rate of list growth b)your increase in mailing frequency, how long before an upgrade is required? And how much extra will this cost?
• What deliverability gains do you achieve over your current provider?  Do you see an increase in deliverability to key domains (hotmail, yahoo, gmail ?)
• How are Auto-Responders handled?  If someone is away from the office due to vacation or illness, newsletters are going to get repeated auto-responses which could trigger an unsubscribe. You can lose thousands of subscribers this way. How does the ESP handle these?
• Using dedicated IP addresses? How long will IP warming take?
• List hygiene?  Ever hear of hoodmail.com.au ? Neither have I.  This is one of several spoof addresses that tend to end up on easy-access (no double-opt-in) mailing lists. Does your ESP habitually screen the quality of new subscribers before they are added to mailing lists?
• When you want to make simple changes like update the messaging on your unsubscribe page, how long does it take and who needs to do it? Your people or the vendors?
• When you call, do they answer the phone? How long does it take for them to respond to voicemail?
• Does your issue get resolved within the day? Or within an acceptable timeframe?
• Data migration: getting it from the old into the new.Setup and ongoing support -Are you dealing with someone with the  technical know-how who can actually solve problems?
• Are you looking for a partner, or simply a delivery system?
• Where is their hardware located? Is it powerful enough to handle your  speed of placement requirements? (enough server CPUs? Big enough pipes?)
• Does analysis of your subscriber data show any anomalies like higher unsubscribes from a particular domain? Have you experienced large spikes in unsubscribes on any particular day? Do you know what triggered it? This could represent a substantial loss of subscribers through a domain rejection rather than actual unsubscribes.
• Last but not least, how much is it going to cost?  Email delivery fees will be pretty much on-par across the board, but the cost of professional services like coding, design, training and database analysis will vary. Plan your needs.

That list was just a few of the things one needs to work through to ensure a transition that goes as smoothly as possible. You’re ending one old relationship because you’ve found someone new and better. There will be some heart-ache, but it can be mitigated.