The ESP Dilemma: Which Email Service Provider Should You Use?

 My, what a sorry world it is, when one has to turn down profitable opportunities and send people elsewhere.

In the past couple of months, I’ve received quite a few requests to handle people’s email marketing projects, and while it may be tempting to snag a few side projects here and there, the truth of the matter is that my day job really does take up all of my time.

So here’s the deal.  Back in the day, when I thought Email Marketing was easy, I thought I could be an ESP (Email Service Provider).  But time and experience do have a way of dragging one down the ladder of dignity.  So forget that.

There are, however, a LOT of Do-It-Yourself Email Service Providers you can make use of for an extremely reasonable price (about $15 a month) - which are easy to use,  and can guarantee great delivery rates and list management capabilities. 

Here’s a rundown of 3 of my favorites so far.  (They all offer free trials, and you don’t have to give your credit card details to sign up, so if you’d like to try them out, just click the "Free Trial Details’ links at the end of each review)

Constant Contact.  Constant Contact offers do-it-yourself email marketing and surveys, and in my view is the ESP of choice for:

• People who’d like to create a good-looking HTML email quickly.  Of the ESP’s I’ve looked into so far, Constant Contact has the prettiest ready-made HTML email templates, and the widest range of choices.  All you need to do is pick a template and customize, and if you have all your content ready, you can pretty much have your email design ready in an hour.  

• Companies who send lots of emails to a small to medium-sized list.  Constant Contact pricing is dependent on the number of subscribers on your list, not the number of emails you send. 

What I like about it:  Pretty templates and the per-contact pricing

What I don’t like about it:  All outgoing emails have a Constant Contact logo at the bottom right, which you absolutely cannot remove.  Also, you can only host up to 5 images on their site with the basic plan. To host more, you have to upgrade to the Premium Image hosting (an extra $5 per month).  Lastly, they don’t have an autoresponder feature.

Pricing:  dependent on number of contacts in your list.  Starts at $15 per month for 0-500 contacts.

Free Trial details:  Email free for 60 days to up to 100 contacts. (You have to pay if you have more than 100)

Vertical Response.  Vertical Response offers complete email, survey, and direct marketing solutions (USA only though).  Use Vertical Response if:

• You want to use your own HTML email design.  Vertical Response also has hundreds of its own customizable templates, if you’d like to use them, but for those who’d like to use their own design, VR’s process of setting it up is the simplest. (Just cut and paste.)

• You want to do more than just email marketing.  Vertical response has a postcard marketing service which totally rocks - although you can only mail  to US addresses.  (I use it to send Christmas postcards). Basically you create your postcard mailing using their do-it-yourself software, upload your mailing list and schedule your mailing. VR will print and send your postcards via first class mail for about a dollar each.   

• You want to use and store lots of images.  With your VR account you can store up to 25Mb of images free of charge, and they have an extensive library of 75,000 stock images you can also use for free.

What I like about it:  Definitely the postcard mailings, and their awesome support library, which offers a lot of really valuable tips, articles, webinars, case studies and other resources for email marketing.

What I don’t like about it: As with Constant Contact, the Vertical Response logo at the bottom of every outgoing email is a non-negotiable. Also I find it a little weird that their newsletter sometimes lands in my Yahoo junk folder - although when i send a test email campaign using my account, it always goes straight to the Inbox.

Pricing:  dependent on number of emails/postcards sent.  Starts at $15 for 1-1000 emails, but goes lower the more emails you send.

Free Trial details:  Send 25 emails and 1 postcard free 

MailChimp is by far the ESP with the most personality, which is why I can’t help but mention it in list of favorites.   Visit their site and you’ll see what I mean.  But aside from that it has some pretty fantastic features you won’t find elsewhere.   Use MailChimp if:

• You want to send your emails out WITHOUT their logo on it.  MailChimp doesn’t require you to attach their logo to your outgoing emails — so you can pretend you’re doing all this impressive HTML email sending without help from any 3rd party provider. 

• You think you can refer enough friends and associates to significantly decrease your email marketing costs. MailChimp may not require you to put their logo on your emails but if you DO, and someone clicks on it and signs up for their service, you get $30 credited to your account. (Incidentally the person you referred ALSO gets $30, which is pretty cool.)

• You want to do split testing to see, for example, which subject line works better. MailChimp has a new A/B split testing feature, which you can use to run quick, automatic A/B tests with every single email you send.  No need to setup randomized segments, send multiple campaigns, and constantly analyze piles of campaign data. They do it all for you. You just click the "A/B" button, specify a few criteria, and their patent-pending A/B tester handles the rest—automatically.

What I like about it:  As I mentioned earlier, aside from all the great features, they also have personality! After going through all the boring corporate-type websites I have to visit each day, MailChimp.com is like a breath of fresh air.  All their web copy, including the articles in a truly fantastic resource library, is infused with wit and an often irreverent tone I find totally refreshing.  (For example, they have an article entitled "Stupid HTML Email Design Mistakes (Seriously, You Should Know Better)."  They also have an excellent 65-page Email Marketing Guide you can download here. 

What I don’t like about it: They have 4 basic HTML templates you can customize, and though the customization wizard is cute and easy to use, there are no "ready-made" templates available that you can just tweak a little bit.  So the email creation process takes a bit longer.  

Pricing: MailChimp has 2 pricing plans (which is also pretty cool).  One plan is for frequent senders, based on number of subscribers.  This starts at $15 for 0-500 contacts.  The other plan is a prepaid "Pay-As-You-Go" plan on a per-credit basis, starting at $15 for 500 email credits (good for sending to 500 subscribers).

Free Trial Details: Email Free for 30 days

So there you have it!  As I mentioned at the beginning of the rundown, all of the ESP’s in my favorites list are cheap, have excellent delivery rates, and offer all the tools you need to create, send and track your emails - so in the end the choice really boils down to what  suits your particular needs and requirements.

 Good luck, and happy ESP-shopping!

Spam Arrest: Why Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways…

Not much time to write a full article today, but just going through my significantly Spam-free email inbox, I figured I’d write a quick ode to one of my absolute greatest discoveries ever:  Spam Arrest.

As an online marketer, I probably sign up online for anything from 3-10 different things a week - free software trials, site memberships, newsletters, reports, white papers - you name it.  Sometimes I really want what I’m signing up for, and sometimes I just need to see what other people are doing - so I can copy!  Haha!

As an email marketer I understand that each of these signups means I’m going to receive anything from 1 to 100 emails from each site I sign up at (!!!) - but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Before I discovered this lovely thing called Spam Arrest, I was literally receiving at LEAST 120 junk messages per day, per email address that went into my Outlook.  I have SEVEN email addresses in there.  DO THE MATH.

So Spam Arrest, why do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

1. You send an automated challenge email to everyone who writes me, to weed out the undesirables

2. You forward only the "good" email I actually want to my Inbox, and leave all the undesirables in a separate folder - lost in cyberlimbo until I say they’re ok. HAHAH! SUCK IT, Spammers!

3. You keep a copy of all my email online, so I can access it from anywhere…

4. You’re cheap…

…and so much more.  Like I said, not much time today.  Admittedly, there still are some doggedly determined Spammers who still get through - but my Outlook junk filter takes care of those. … And seriously - 3 or 4 pieces of junk compared to over a thousand (???) is perfectly fine by me.

To see more about how Spam Arrest works, watch this demo:

Testing, Testing, Testing: Why You Should Laugh in the Face of Anyone Who Claims to Be an Email Marketing "Expert"

I received my professional certification seal for Email Marketing yesterday, and I’m thrilled to pieces… though I do realize there isn’t a whole lot to jump around about …it hardly qualifies me as an expert.  Here’s why…

There’s NO SUCH THING as an email marketing expert. Never let those glib, smarmy consultants tell you otherwise.

Email marketing is a constantly moving target, and everything any "email expert" knows today could be old news tomorrow.  The key to successful email marketing (or any other kind of direct marketing, come to think of it) is TESTING, TESTING, TESTING.  And then some MORE TESTING, for good measure.

Effective email marketing is a never-ending cycle: Test. Send. Analyze. Improve. And then start all over again.  You can take a million courses, attend every seminar in the world, and read every book available on Email Marketing… but at best you’ll only learn the basics, as well as current trends, practices and findings that can help you along the long, tortuous journey to the Inbox.  While still extremely valuable, these things can’t tell you what only your own testing can …what works with YOUR particular database of customers and subscribers

Fortunately, testing in email marketing is relatively inexpensive, and most (though not all) changes you need to make can usually be made in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately,  the list of things you can and should test is pretty formidable:

 1. Deliverability.  Is your email getting into inboxes or junk folders? Or is it just not getting delivered at all??  In a 2007 Email Deliverability study conducted by Lyris Technologies, they found that:

• Marketers sending permission-based emails to U.S.-based ISPs still land in the junk/bulk folder almost 16 percent of the time.

• Marketers sending to European ISPs face even more trouble. More than 20 percent of permission-based emails were sent to the junk/bulk folder.

As for Asia, WHO KNOWS?  But I’m willing to bet the numbers aren’t any prettier.

2. Envelope Fields.  In email lingo, envelope fields refer to your "From" and "Subject" lines - basically the only 2 things your recipient will see if he/she doesn’t have a preview panel.  If you learn nothing else from this article, learn this: NEVER underestimate the importance of  your From and Subject lines.  

Ten times out of ten, they will ultimately determine the fate of that carefully-designed email campaign your creative department took months to get "right."   Jupiter Research reported in December 2007 that consumers receive an average of 274 personal emails and 304 business emails a week.  Do the math.  How capable is your boring subject from XYZ company of standing out in that crowd?  And don’t make the mistake of thinking a clever subject designed to elicit an open (but not delivering on its promise) will endear you or your product to the readers you just tricked.

3. Copy.  How effective is your Introduction, or Lead?  Does short or long copy work better for your product offering? Which offer or incentive is more appealing to your consumers?  What particular "Call to Action" is actually "acted upon" the most?  These all have to be tested - and one at a time at that. it’s important to note that when testing, you can only change one variable at a time, with all other elements remaining exactly the same  in order to determine what exactly caused the rise or decline in your response rate.

 4. Layout.  Your layout, look, style, fonts and even colours not only affect email deliverability.  They also (GREATLY) affect your email’s effectivity in bringing your message across, and reinforcing your brand and corporate identity.

5. Landing page.  If you just read this and said "Huh? What landing page?" - and email is a significant (of at least potentially significant) source of sales for your business - then prepare to cringe.  Back in the day, using the email as a standalone sales vehicle may have been enough.  But not anymore.  Ideally, your email should focus on just one objective:  to make the reader click through to a landing page where you have all the freedom you need to knock yourself out and close the sale.

This may seem lke a short list ("Cool, just 5 items!") - but believe me… it’s NOT!  Even when you do get through testing all the different aspects mentioned above, the battle is far from over. 

 As I mentioned at the start, effective email marketing is a never ending cycle of TESTING TESTING, and more TESTING. When you get to the bottom of the list, and come up with an email creative that actually works… that only means it’s time to start all over again.   

 Welcome to my world.