Whenever I’m on the phone with a subscription or membership site publisher these days, one of the questions I invariably ask them is, “What email service provider are you using?” I can instantly tell from their answer how well run their email program is — especially whether their email is actually getting delivered. (The latter is the primary, but by no means the only, reason most publishers should be using a good ESP rather than in-house systems.)
Even with Twitter, RSS Feeds, online groups, mobile, etc., broadcast email is still pretty darn central to our businesses. You are probably largely dependent on your email programs (broadcasts, autoresponders, triggered messages & autoresponders) for a fat chunk of your repeat visitor traffic. And repeats mean more conversions, not to mention longer account lifetimes.
So, you can see how I’m continually shocked at the lousy answers I get from many publishers on tjhe email vendor question. Some don’t know the name of their vendor. (Can you imagine not knowing the name of a vendor that central to your bottom line? I can’t.) Others tell me they’re using an ESP that allows new clients to upload lists and start sending with nothing more than a credit card – no re-opt-ins, no double opt-ins, just upload and send — a way to guarantee you’ll be sharing a grey-listed IP address with spammers. And some tell me they use an email program that “came with” some other software they’re using, perhaps their cart, a CMS system, a circulation management program, whatever. Again, a guaranteed way to have lame delivery because companies that don’t focus solely on email don’t tend to do a good enough job of providing the service you really need.
Rant over. (I could go on and on…)
The fact is, unless you’re working with a top-of-the-line email service provider (or you’re such a huge company that you have a fullltime technical email staff in-house), your mail is probably not getting delivered as well as you think it is. Getting past filters ain’t easy. Especially if you’re B2B and you have to get past corporate filters and then probably personal Outlook filters to boot.
Deliverability is a moving target. What was true five years ago is no longer always correct. I’m delighted to have discovered this lovely blog which does a nice job of myth-busting and educating.. Tell your email team about it – enjoy!
Hi Anne
Streamsend is doing it right. They were one of 30 email marketing providers I researched for my post for SmallBizTrends. We got a ton of traffic from that one post — why? Because you hit the proverbial nail on the head and drove it home: Email marketing is still how we communicate with our customers and prospects. Keep the relationship building going with this great new blog you’re doing! Thanks.
TJ
I also believe email delivery is based on what kind of clients your ESP attracts.
Yes, they can follow more or less the rules (such as not allowing clients to upload crap lists to their server with just a credit card, etc.).
But if their clients turn around and send a bunch of crap out, and the ESP does not also clean the list from spam complaints on hotmail, gmail, or others (and penalize or get rid of clients that do this relentlessly overtime), then ALL their clients suffer from deliverability.
Like many likely here, I subscribe to hundreds of marketing-oriented newsletters… usually in one or two hotmail or gmail accounts. I watch and read them, but I also notice what email services they use, and what goes into the “junk/spam” folder…. and perhaps why (was it the service they used, or the wording in the message or subjecdt line?)
Bar none, those that use somethning like Aweber get through, time and time again.
Those that do not, are those that use things that might be popular ESPs in the “internet marketing” world, but don’t do “due diligence”.
While they are great services in many aspects, they do not unsub those subscribers that click on “this is spam” (which pollutes their lists and their servers for everyone else using them) — and they also attract many “get rich quick” internet marketers who don’t care about relevance or frequnncy, but just want to slam their email servers with whatever it takes to send a message…. relentless messages to convert a list to sales.
I think it’s worth while to take a look at who are the clients of an ESP, and watch how those clients use it. Sign up for lots of email newsletters. See who gets through. Then look at the service they use.
Yes, none of us like the restricxtive things like Aweber does (I mean we kind of all would like to just import lists and do whatever we want, etc.)… yet things like Aweber produce results in delivery.
And there is a reason for that.
PS – what I forgot to mention.
One of my sites has the most, true-blue, restrictive email delivery obstacles on planet Earth … far more likely than any corporate email server — the U.S. federal government…. which has unruly restrictions on email delivery at highly secure military installations (including blocking images in HTML and/or tracking links from ESPs)
We use a variety of ESPs to serve this market (for ancillary product purchases from shopping carts, etc), but hands down, Aweber comes through for us for our email newsletter. Their severs are clean, and respected by the most worried IT security folks in in the U.S. Govt. We have had occasional issues with a federal agency blocking emails, but all were resolved with Aweber’s great staff.