What to Look for in an Email Services Provider (Part 1 of 2)

I recently saw an ad for a self-service email marketing solution that went something like this:

Q. Can anyone tell me what I get for email campaign setup fees?

A. We couldn't begin to tell you because we don't charge any.

The underlying message of the ad is that all campaign setup fees are a waste of money. But this is just not true. Many organizations struggle with time and resource issues, and others just want to ensure that their campaigns are professionally executed from day one.

Having said that, it's important to ensure that you get your money's worth when hiring an email services provider (ESP). In this first part of a two-part article, I'll discuss some of the more important services that you should receive.

Quality Control of List

• Unsubscribes. If you submit a list for use in the mailing, your ESP should run that list against the unsubscribe file. Apart from being a good business practice, it's important in terms of CAN-SPAM compliance.
  
  
• Soft bounces. Similarly, your ESP should ensure that you don't attempt to send mail to addresses for which you've received a number of soft bounces. (Soft bounces occur for a number of reasons. Some of the most common are these: the domain exists, but the email address is invalid; the mailbox is full; or the receiving server was down or busy.)
  
  A high bounce rate often indicates a list in need of maintenance. Also, and perhaps more importantly, if major ISPs and Web-based email services see that you're repeatedly attempting to send email to bad addresses, you might end up getting blacklisted altogether.
  
  
• Seed list. This is easy to overlook. But the ESP should ask if there are any people at your company (who might not already be on the list) who need to see the campaign when it goes "live." The ESP should then add these email addresses to the seed list.

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Paul Broni is EVP/client services director of Inbox Interactive (www.inboxinteractive.com), a full-service email marketing company. Reach him at paul@inboxinteractive.com.