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Email Marketing

Email Marketing, sounds simple right? Well like most things in life its not! Email marketing is a billion dollar industry that has been around since the beginning of email. It is an affordable and highly effective form of direct marketing, the channel of communication is electronic mail. There are hundreds of email marketing companies around right now and new ones popping up all the time. This can make choosing the right email service provider a daunting task (if choosing one at all). Many of these email marketing companies try to target a unique customer niche. However some are just a complete waste of money. Like most things in life; if the price sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

A little about me before we get started

I have worked for and with various email marketing companies over the past few years. I have probably evaluated/used about twenty different email marketing programs/software’s. I have had a lot of great success with email marketing but that success did not come smoothly. I have had some bumps/companies over the years that just were not worth the time or money. Below I will try to explain the industry for you so that when looking for an email marketing company you can make a confident decision.

The benefits of using Email as a marketing tool

Email marketing is one of the fastest ways to reach out to a large audience. It is also relatively inexpensive which makes it attractive to the mom and pop shops, mega corporations, and everything in between.. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to gather data about your customers. You can send out an email and track how many people open it, which links they click on, if they send it to a friend and loads more valuable information.  Before someone sign up for your newsletter you can have them fill out a basic questionnaire which can gather valuable information for further analysis. Try doing this with direct mail which is not only harder to track, but more expensive as well. In some cases the stamp alone can be 50 times the price of sending out just one email. Email marketing makes it very easy to target each customer/reader with the right email. It allows you to maximize the value of data you have gathered on your customer/reader. This can keep people reading which in the end will hopefully lead to that extra sale.

Some of the problems with using email marketing

SPAM! Everyone hates it. I personally love spam and junk mail. Why you ask? Sometimes it’s hard to realize, but spam actually provides millions of jobs for our country (the U.S.), and many other countries across the globe. Spam, just like email marketing, is a billion dollar industry so don’t take it lightly. So why would spam be a problem if you are sending out legit “CAN-SPAM” Compliant emails? Well for one, the last thing you want to do is irritate your beloved customers. Even when people sign up and actually want to read your newsletter, they are still sensitive to “over selling” and obtrusive advertisements. Another problem: are your emails ending up in their inbox, or in their junk mail folder? With all of the blacklisting systems and spam filtration programs, sending out mass emails runs you the risk of not getting through to your customers. At the end of the day email marketing does have its challenges, but it’s such an inexpensive and effective marketing tool that it is well worth the risk.

Things to watch out for when choosing an email marketing company

WhiteListing! This is the biggest joke in the industry. The purpose of a “white list” is to magically make any emails sent from you end up in your customer’s inbox, not their spam folder. Many email marketing companies will tell you things like: “We are 100% whitelisted with everyone”. First of all; this is impossible to do when using a shared IP address. Sound foreign to you? I will get into this later. Furthermore, there are millions of whitelists out there, so being 100% whitelisted is absolutely impossible. Say you wanted to get whitelisted with one of the major providers such as Gmail or Yahoo…It will not happen! You’re dreaming. Their policy’s are so strict that the cost to maintain being on one would outweigh the benefit. If you have even the simplest of mistakes you are kicked off from the whitelist.

Blacklisting! This is a real problem, especially with the lower end email marketing companies using Shared IPs. If you choose to use a company that uses shared IPs, ask them to send you a block of their IPs so you can check them for black list at Senderscore.org.  If they wont send you the IP information then don’t use them!  Note**  Sender Score is run by Return Path and can be a valuable tool when trying to get details on an IP adress.

Shared IP vs. Unique! First, let me explain the importance of an IP address. When sending bulk email, it is not the user that is put on a blacklist or whitelist, it is the IP address. An IP address in short is your computer’s “fingerprint” on the net. Your email service provider also has their own fingerprint. Also, the IP address is tracked for things like bounce backs, spam complaints and other information that can strongly affect your deliverability rate. A shared IP, just as it sounds, is an IP address shared by multiple people. Anyone sending over 50k emails a month does not want to be on a shared IP. Under 50k per month and it really depends on your needs, goals, and the email marketing company you are using. If everyone using the Shared IP is sending good mail, getting few bounce backs and complaints then it works in your favor. However it only takes one bad apple to come in and put you on a black list or ruin the IP’s integrity. Imagine sending thousands of emails to your valued list, only to find out it is not getting through because some other company got the IP address blacklisted for sending out spam. I know I’d be pretty upset! I would recommend using a shared IP in two different cases. The first, if your are sending under 50k emails a month. Sending that few would make it very hard to get any reputation at all on a unique IP. Maybe try a company such as Constant Contact for this. Second, if you are a spammer and want to use someone Else’s reputation this would also be the way to go (hence the problem with using it). The spammer would lean on the reputation that good senders had set forth for the IP address.

Unique IP’s are for the bigger sender. This puts the reputation of the IP in the hands of you, the sender. If you are a good sender, in time it will pay off greatly. You will slowly develop a good reputation and start getting very effective results from your email marketing campaigns. Work with your email marketing company to make sure your list is as clean as possible and that you are sending out good content. Using the Unique IP you will never have to worry about another company effecting your deliverabilty rate.

Sometimes it is the customer’s (your) fault

Usually when something does not go the way someone would like they immediately point the finger at the email marketing company. In some cases this may be true but in most cases, it’s not. Maybe you, the customer, chose to use that shared IP knowing the risk that came with it. Maybe you did not check the IP addresses for blacklists when using that low end company.

Usually, the problems I see are within the customers list. If it is not a list you have home grown (a true opt in email list) you probably are not going to get the best results. Even if you buy a list and the person who sells you the list tells you that the list is opt in, how many of these people would truly want to read your mail? You have to ask yourself a few honest, and obvious questions such as: What did they opt into? How old is the list? How many times has the list been sold before? These are all variables that can turn that email list into garbage and not only give you bad results but ruin your IP address.

The content of the email can also be a HUGE problem. First, you need to take a step back and take an honest look at it. If you received this email, would you want to read it? Would the subject line even get you to open it? Does it catch your eye? If not you might want to make some changes. Furthermore most email marketing company’s are going to have some type of spam checker for you to use before you send it out. This should help a lot especially for people new to the industry.

For our big senders out there I would check into a product called Pivotal Veracity. PV is a little pricey but if you are getting ready to send out a million+ emails it is 100% worth every penny. Some email marketing companies such as Gold Lasso even have it built into their product. PV has multiple value ads to an email campaing. First, PV allows you to see how your email will render within every major email providor and cell phone. This can give you an idea of how it will look and if your HTML is showing up correct in all the various inboxes. Second, PV will show you where your mail is going. Is it in the inbox, spam folder or maybe just missing. PV has some other great value ads so to check them out click here.

Who we recommend

For the Small guy sending under 20k emails a month

If you are sending less then 20k emails a month check out Constant Contact. These guys are the best in this field and have a great customer base to prove it. They are inexpensive, easy to work with and their program has an easy to use interface. You are also going to get a huge email template library that will make it easy to create professional looking emails. They do use shared IPs but they monitor them very well and will kick anyone off if they are spamming.

Constant Contact Offers a Generous Free Trial, Check it Out:

For the medium guy sending 20k-2 million a month:

For the “medium-volume” sender I would look into Gold Lasso. Gold Lasso is going to tell you they will give you the biggest bang for your buck in the email marketing industry and that is exactly what they are. They don’t have the smoothest looking or easiest to use interface in the industry, but from a feature standpoint they are right up there with the top guys. They also use Unique IPs and allow you to monitor blacklist within your account. They don’t have a huge template library but you can easily find free email templates on the internet. In our Opinion I would probably lock up a contract with these guys because when they do fix their interface I would assume they will raise their rates significantly.

For the big guys sending 1 million+

These companies are harder for me to recommend because I have not personally used them, my observations are based on what I’ve read and heard about them. I would check out Silverpop, Exact Target and if you want everything done for you maybe Cheetahmail. These companies are the best but you will definitely pay for the best. In some cases for the same price you could use a company like Gold Lasso and bring a full time staff member on to manage the account. Unless you are sending an extremely large amount of email, I would not recommend using these companies.

Final Words

At the end of the day remember a few things. If the price is too good to be true;  it probably is. Talk with the email marketing company about unique and shared IPs. Lastly, always remember that no matter what company you choose to use, sending good content will bring good results, sending crap will get you crap results.