Email Marketing Vendors

Email marketing has gained prominence in the online industry in these past few years. Studies like the one done by AMR Research have shown that focused email marketing campaign generated about 7 to 12 times the response rate in comparison to that of traditional snail-mail marketing.

Email marketing is amongst the easiest of strategies to do since the emergence of the internet. It became easy to communicate with people and reach your target audience with the use of this technology. That is why more and more companies have ventured into this marketing campaign with the hope of better results in their business.

In a report, Forrester Research showed that companies spent more than $1.1 billion only on email marketing during 2001 and this has only increased in the following years. That is why several email marketing vendors that provide email marketing products and services came out to take advantage of this booming market.

Often the most difficult thing is to choose the most suitable solutions and services from the many available options. The internet is filled with so many email marketing vendors that this decision often becomes the most difficult to make and is the most vulnerable.

Before starting to evaluate the different email marketing vendors solutions available, it is best to understand email marketing campaigns and its components. Email campaign involves strategy, creativity, copywriting skills, list management, process execution, reporting and analysis. Some of the email marketing vendors provide most, if not all, of these categories. Depending on your company’s specific needs, you may avail some or, all of these features.

Evaluating Different Email Marketing Vendors Solutions

Email marketing vendors can be categorized in three main areas: off-the-shelf, mid-range, and high-end solutions. Let us evaluate the main characteristics of each solution in terms of the features, benefits and costs.

• Off-the-shelf solutions – This type of service is ideal for small businesses willing to allot internal resources for email marketing. The features commonly included in this type of service include sending personalized HTML emails, list management, basic tracking and reporting, and customer service. The maximum number of emails off-the-shelf products can handle is 500,000 per month. This kind of service can range for as low as $30 to $350 per month. However, for most of these service vendors, ownership and control of list, reporting and data tracking are theirs. One of the best off the shelf email marketing vendors is aweber.
• Mid-range solutions – An example of a mid-range solutions provider is Pixel Bridge. It provides its clients with fully customized solutions, from strategy formulation to tracking, analysis and maintenance, depending on the clients’ needs. This type of service provider is ideal for small and mid-sized entities with advanced marketing needs. These companies are usually those that are comfortable in using outsourced marketing services and customized solutions. The costs of availing the service of mid-range email marketing vendors range from $500-$3,000 per month. They typically manage 1,000 – 100,000 emails per month. The application that these service providers offer can also be bought outright for $10,000-$50,000.
• High-end solutions – These high-end email marketing vendors are focused and really specialize on email marketing. Examples of these firms are Carat Interactive, MarketFirst and Responsys. These providers offer extremely sophisticated marketing technologies capable of launching and monitoring online or, offline marketing strategies that involve millions of recipients. These providers offer a more comprehensive data analysis approach which includes helping their clients identify historical patterns to improve their conversion rate. The cost of availing the services of high-end providers range from $6,000-$60,000 per campaign, which average from $20,000-$30,000 for most promotions.

Each company will have a unique set of requirement, and email marketing has evolved to offer a variety of solutions to address some or, all of those needs. When choosing one amongst the many the right email marketing vendors, keep in mind your company’s needs. List down all possible email marketing vendors that you think will suit you best, and then map out each one to identify which among them can address all of your company’s requirements.

Price is one of the most important factors to consider. But, it is not always advisable to sacrifice quality for price. The important thing to be addressed is your internal needs and requirements. If you choose the right email marketing vendors for your company, paying a bit steeper price may not matter anymore since you will eventually earn it back with the huge returns that the marketing campaign promises.

Email marketing is such a unique field that the old ways just do not work with the modern campaigns. So when it comes to choosing your email marketing vendor, be sure to make the right decision for more successful years ahead.