First you may be asking, “what is an Email Service Provider (ESP)?” Well think of it as the heart of your business. Your ESP is where you are going to store all those important email addresses you collect and your ESP will allow you to then send out emails to that collection of contacts.
When you are choosing an ESP, you are looking for a company that has stability, is a good fit for your needs, and has the ability to grow as your business grows. You are looking for what is on the inside that will be there in the future, not the pretty face or stylish clothing that can change over time. Approach picking your ESP like you are out looking for your perfect spouse. Here is why and how to accomplish it. Let’s start dating….
How choosing an ESP is like selecting a spouse
Choosing the right ESP company is a long term commitment. In most cases, you don’t want to choose a provider knowing that you might divorce in a few years when you outgrow your relationship. Remember, divorces aren’t cheap, switching costs are high: both the financial costs and the time investment in migrating your data and integrating with a new platform. Therefore, choosing an ESP warrants serious consideration up front.
Make a list of the “must-have” requirements or criteria of your ideal ESP Partner
Define your must-have requirements or criteria before you get started. Create a simple requirements list or create a simple list of criteria to guide you through the process. Then you can use the list of comparison items below and create your own spreadsheet. This will allow you to compare each potential ESP and how one stacks up against the other).
Here are some potential comparison items you can use…
1. Ease of Use
How easy is it going to be to create and send your emails? Does the ESP offer a “drag and drop” feature? Do they have templates available for use? Are creative templates an important feature, or are you skilled and creative enough to design your own? Do you like to include images in your emails? or do you prefer to use plain text emails?
2. Email types
(Not to be confused with do they HTML or Rich/plain text)
The questions you are looking to ask here are… does the platform support email automations including autoresponders, automated daily emails, intelligence drive automation, automated daily emails, one-off broadcast emails? This all refers to after someone provides you with their email address, you are looking for the following features or capabilities… does your ESP allow for a series of emails to be automatically sent out to that email address? Can emails be scheduled in advance to go on specific days? Will a special email be sent if they read your email or a completely different email goes if they don’t read your last email? Lastly, can you send a one-time email or broadcast to all of your list or just a subset of your list? (in future blogs I will detail out when each type of email is needed)
3. Integrations:
How would you rate the importance of your ESP being able to integrate into other platforms, like for example, sales funnels or payment systems? Nice-to-have? Don’t need it? Or are you wondering what this means?
In today’s world there are many other forms of software or platforms to help you provide value to your clients. It is increasingly important that your ESP connects with those platforms in a simple way to make your life easier. For example, will it be important for your sales funnel to populate your ESP or will they remain separate? Will you collect client information during the actual sale and store in your ESP? What is the ease of integration if you do need these features?
4. Dynamic email fields:
Dynamic email fields allow you to populate certain aspects of your email with items like the person’s name, or other personal information so they feel like you wrote specifically to them. Will it be important to you to personalize emails? How critical is this?
5. Split testing capabilities:
“Split Testing” is just the ability to compare two versions of the same email where there are slight differences to see which is more appealing to your client. While in the beginning it might not be crucial to do split testing, but as your business grows it is very important for you to continually be testing what is working for you and what is not when you send an email. For example, did you use the optimal subject line? Is the content driving action? Are the images in the email helping or are they not needed?
6. Analytics:
So how are your emails and campaigns doing? It would be nice to know, so start with the basics. At a minimum, you should be able to see how many emails were sent, delivered, opened, or bounced (rejected for any number of reasons). Also important is how many complaints did you receive? What is the open rate? What are the number of clicks? What is the click-through-rate? These last three are related to how successful you are to getting to have someone open, read, click on a link in the email, and finally them actually getting to where you were sending.
7. Customer Support:
How do they deliver their customer support? Can you call and talk to someone, do they provide “Chat” capabilities, or is email the only option? How do you best work with customer service?
It’s your first date… ask questions!
So now you are dating your potential ESP partners, let’s put your list to the test. Cover all your must-haves, wishes, nice-to haves with each partner. When choosing your ESP, move down your list to confirm whether they offer each must-have or miss the mark and be brutally honest. But let’s also ask those other important questions beyond just the day-to-day features they have. Here are few other questions to potential ask. (I will go into more details of these in future blogs)
- What is their policy regarding the collection of email addresses? Single opt-in? Only double opt-in? (This refers to whether a potential subscriber to your email list must confirm they want to join your list (double opt-in). This can be a whole other blog on the pros and cons of single vs. double opt-in). Who ultimately owns the list if you decide for divorce in the future?
- What is the expected response time for your support request? Is there escalation process for critical or emergency situations? What happens if you are in the middle of a critical time and the emails are not being sent?
- What was their performance last year? You should be looking for an uptime of 99.9% or better? Do they guarantee uptime percentage? This is important because you do not want to have to worry if your provider will be up and running when you want emails to be sent.
- What type of backup do they have in place for downtime? Is your data protect/stored and how is data recovered (automatically, or manually)?
- Who owns the unsubscribe process? Can you manage this on your end, including the link in emails and the page to which you send users? This can be important if you want to have the ability to interact with the subscriber before they unsubscribe and maybe keep them on your list.
Don’t race out to find the perfect ring just yet…
Get to know each other a little before you commit to each other… have them wine and dine you a little. Try having at least four dates.
Date One: Call their Sales Team
Date Two: Have them do a demo (with a live person so you can ask questions)
Date Three: Call their Support Team
Date Four: Get a trial period to test
Google the Heck out of the potential partner
You are now ready to take the plunge with your ESP… BUT wait… time to find out, if they have any, the dirty little secrets. Like getting a private investigator to do a background check on your potential spouse (ok, not always advised), just do a little more research on how others are doing in their relationship with your favorite ESP. Check out YouTube, bulletin boards, reviews, tap into your contact network to see what others are saying. NOTE: be skeptical of those who have only great things to say… no one is perfect so look for the honest evaluations… the good, bad, and the ugly.
Time to sign the marriage license
So you have done all your wooing, dating, validating, and dirt digging, and you are ready to commit. Now take a little more time to find the perfect wedding ring (deal). Ask around if anyone has knowledge or access to special offers or a deal including bonus offers. Depending on the time of the year, and the sales cycle of your soon to be ESP, they might have something extra special for you. Can’t find anything, then try one last call to the Sales Team, try something like “…I am considering your company and another and was wondering what is your best offer for me to pick you?”. Ok, truth is, unless you are really big they may just tell you the going offer, but who knows without asking.
Alright… get out there and good luck with your new marriage!