This is a guest blog from Eric Rabinowitz, President of The Nurture Institute, a full-service business-to-business consulting firm that offers a “software plus services” email marketing solution
Email service provider (ESP) solutions are easy to use, convenient and provide the capability to deliver all types of targeted email marketing campaigns. While most are inexpensive to use and offer tools to get started quickly, they may not be as effective as you think. Here are five interesting secrets your ESP will never tell you, and they could be the reason why your email marketing campaigns are not delivering the best results.
Nasty #1 Subservient to the ISP. The CAN-SPAM Act permits Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to set their own rules of what emails they will let pass through their servers and those that are denied. This leverage allows the ISP to dictate the terms for free passage of your ESP’s emails through their servers. Things like third-party authentication, list reviews, email approvals are just some of the things that your ESP may be doing to appease the ISP.
Why should you care? If an ISP decides that all communications from your ESP should be stopped, there is nothing to prevent them from doing this. With more unwanted marketing messages clogging up your inbox and the ISP’s infrastructure, I believe it’s only a matter of time before stricter guidelines will be imposed, essentially eliminating the flow of email campaigns as you know them today. The easiest first step is to blacklist communications from the 150-plus top ESPs that broadcast “on behalf of” their customers. Where would this leave you?
Nasty #2 Samuel Clemens on behalf of Mark Twain. Did you know that your email is not really coming from “you” when you use an ESP? When prospects open your email, they typically see an “on behalf of” address from the sender (a.k.a. you).
Why should you care? When a prospect or client opens one of these emails, they will know right away that the message is not necessarily personalized, and more likely a marketing message. In the world of viruses, spam and phishing, these messages, when received, will likely get deleted. This can certainly impact your campaign’s “deliverability.” Your messages are likely to be deleted before they are ever seen!
Nasty #3 Easy is Not Always the Best. Most ESPs offer dozens of templates for you to choose from. Using templates as an email marketer can make your life easier, but is that the best way to get results?
Why should you care? People tend to choose a small portion of a template library for their email messages. Your prospect can easily receive emails from several vendors and even your competitors with the exact same template that you are using. The only difference would be your logo. Branding is very important in marketing your company’s product or service. Generic does not work for most companies, and finding a template that matches your company’s look and feel could be challenging. Don’t you want your messages to be distinctive?
Nasty #4 Every Company Has a Shakespeare, Right? Your ESP offers the capability to “deliver” (I use this term loosely) your messages, but what about the actual message? What you say is more important than how the message is delivered.
Why should you care? Overlooked by most ESPs is the requirement that in order for messages to be read there has to be something compelling to read. Studies show that people scan the content in emails looking for items they like. Professional writers are trained and experienced in creating interesting communications that catch the reader’s attention within a concise and readable format. Companies should consider hiring a professional writer to create marketing copy that resonates with their clients and prospects.
Nasty #5 “Outta Sight is Outta Mind and Outta Mind is Outta Money, Honey” – Mae West. ESPs can give you the capability to create and deliver email campaigns. As a result, most are implemented in a “one-off” approach, rather than a coordinated series.
Why should you care? The goal of marketing is to create top-of-mind awareness through persistence and consistency. The Nurture Institute’s marketing methodology offers a series of best practices and guidelines to create coordinated campaigns to achieve top of mind awareness. Sending single, “one-off” messages rarely work and they can lead to the complacency of the sender thinking that they are doing something positive, but in fact they are wasting time and money.
The good news is that competition in the ESP space is intense and there are a lot of choices. Before selecting an ESP, make a list of your email marketing requirements. If your email marketing initiatives consist of multi-step, “nurture” campaigns, it is important to find an appropriate ESP.
The key is finding an ESP that offers a hybrid approach, combining a server-based platform that integrates with your email client such as Microsoft Outlook. With hybrid solutions, each campaign is centrally managed, but the actual delivery utilizes an individual’s email client application such as Microsoft Outlook to send outbound personalized email messages.
With this approach, email campaigns are unobtrusive to the sender and fully transparent to the recipient — significantly increasing deliverability and effectiveness.
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