How to Determine which Email Service Provider is the Right One for You

First things first, what exactly is an email service provider (ESP)?  An email service provider (ESP) helps you in the processes of creating and executing well-organized and professional email marketing campaigns.  Fundamentally, email service providers provide a system for many companies to carefully manage and successfully send email campaigns.  But of course, you would want to have an [tp lang=”en” only=”y”]email service provider[/tp][tp not_in=”en”]email service provider[/tp] that is considered to be among the best, right?

Most people claim that there are three simple ways how they would know that their email service provider is really working out for them as it provides them the tools they need:

• To create professional-looking messages.
• To help them make sure that they really get delivered.
• To inform them on how the readers are interacting with their email campaigns.

For a lot of people who employ the services of an email service provider, as long as the three things above are met, then they are completely satisfied and move on to doing other types of marketing campaigns for their products and/or services online.

Still, if you are someone who is just starting out in your online business, naturally you wouldn’t have any idea how to select that email service provider that is suited for your needs and wants, right?  Below are some factors to help you how to determine which email service provider is the right one for you:

Free Trial Period

Many ESPs nowadays offer a free trial period.  This is a good chance to do a test drive and see if that particular ESP really meets your needs.

Compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act

The CAN-SPAM Act is a law which gives any email address owner the right to have you stop or discontinue sending them email messages (that contains a commercial ad or promotion of a product/service).  An ESP that is compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act will always include an unsubscribe link on each and every email message that you send through their service, automatically remove email addresses that click on that unsubscribe link, and confirm that every email is sent from a working and valid email address.

Management of Lists

The ESP must allow you to easily manage and divide lists by demographics (age, gender, location, race, employment status, etc.) and other factors.  You will be able to achieve a higher success rate in your email marketing campaigns when you get to target specific subsets of your list with content that is important, informative and useful for them.

Good Reporting

To let you know how effective your email marketing campaigns are, the ESP must be able to provide you with various easy-to-understand and detailed reports such as delivery success rates, email-opening rates and link click-through rates.  The ESP must also provide you a list of your subscribers who had actually opened your email messages as well as those who had clicked on the links within those emails you sent.

Customer Service/Support and Training

A genuinely reliable ESP must have both online (email or chat) and telephone customer service/support and training.  Also, choose an ESP that has a customer service staff that is proven to respond quickly and accurately to any of your questions and concerns.

Transparency in Prices and Contracts

Email service providers typically host your list of email addresses on their servers. ESPs normally charge you a monthly fee based on either of the two: the total number of existing emails available on your list, or the total number of emails that you will send each month.

Never sign up for anything that will eventually force you to keep using their services for more than a month, especially when you are unhappy with their overall performance.  You must be able to easily cancel and switch services whenever you think and feel that it’s the right thing to do.

Closing Thoughts

Looking for an email service provider is going to be a time consuming task, especially if it’s your first time.  It’s actually a good thing that nowadays, there are a lot of email service providers available out there for you to choose from.  If you are currently searching for a good email service provider, then opt for ones that meet your basic needs and of course, go for those that perform even beyond your expectations.  When you work with a really good email service provider, you are assured that your email marketing campaigns will turn out to be truly worthwhile and highly successful.