Are Email Marketing Providers Finally Working Out the Kinks?
December 10, 2008
Receiving a bunch of unwanted email messages from a company always results in negative consequences. In light of the reports about spam, it’s understandable that small businesses have under-utilized or ignored email marketing tools.
But the fact is that successful companies, who often see an increase in revenue of 50% or more, continue to use email marketing tools to reach customers effectively and instantaneously. That’s why people like me keep writing about it. If utilized correctly, email is a powerful, valuable means of marketing online.
Jeremy Saibil, director of deliverability at Campaigner, says that email marketers should empathize with email recipients to fully test the deliverability and effectiveness of emails before sending them. He advises:
Have your IT folks set up a pristine, never-before-used e-mail box. Take this new address and subscribe to all of your own marketing programs. Now take a step back and put yourself in the shoes of your users and ask yourself how many e-mails you send a week as a company (The e-mail deliverability blame game: Marketers need to look in the mirror, DMNews.com).
–Sage advice from a representative of Campaigner, a leading email marketing software provider who has just announced plans to focus on three key areas of improvement for their service in 2009:
1. 1. Targeting (through highly customizable, segmented lists)
2. 2. Personalization (through use of stored personal attributes features for message tailoring)
3. 3. Deliverability (through third-party deliverability firms like Return Path)
It may be a while before small business email marketing providers catch up with bigger companies in terms of performance, but at least these service providers now recognize the need to improve based on the best practices of email marketing. It would be nice to have lower-cost software alternatives that can perform and be as functional as higher-end options.
For a comparison of the top email marketing options on the market, please visit Email-Marketing-Options.com.
Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC
