Email Marketing First Time Buyers Guide

Email Marketing First Time Buyers Guide
There can be a bewildering range of types of email marketing solutions each with a number of different feature sets.
This guide aims to summarise the pros & cons of each type of solution and what to look for.
Contents
1. Key Features to look for in your first email marketing solution
2. Inhouse software
3. Hosted ASP solutions
4. Bureau / Managed Services
5. The Maxemail Family of Email Marketing Solutions

Key Features to look for in your first email marketing solution
Key functionality that any solution and supplier should offer should includes:
1) UK support via telephone & email
If the support is based abroad you may have to wait several hours for a response. By the time the response has arrived you have gone home and it will be a couple of days till the issue is resolved.
2) Multiple users supported
This is essential if you want multiple members of your marketing department to access the solution.
3) Approval process
If the solution has no approval workflow then it will only be a matter of time before your campaign is delivered incorrectly.
4) Test & Seed list functionality
The ability to test your email to a single or set of seed addresses will save you time and ensure there are no issues with your campaign.
5) Multiple lists
You will require more than a single list if you are going to be sending more than a single newsletter. Check to see if the solution offers this capability.
6) Deduplication of email addresses
This should be automatic and prevent you from bombarding customers with multiple copies of your email.
7) Store data other than email addresses
You will want to store information such as names, purchase history, content preferences and more to use when personalizing and segmenting your campaigns.
8) Appending data
As you collect more data offline you will want to add it to your lists. There should be an option in the solution to add this information to the solution without having to create a new list.
9) Unsubscribe management
This should entail the ability to add a link to your email that takes your recipient to a confirmation page stating they have unsubscribed. This should also flag the record in the solution to automatically ensure they are not sent to again. Advanced solutions give you two types of unsubscribe - global and list unsubscribe. A global unsubscribe will unsubscribe the recipient from all lists while list unsubscribe will simply flag the record as unsubscribed from a single list.

E-Mail Marketing For Dummies

10) Exclude lists
There will be times when you need to exclude certain customers. There might be people who have already taken you up on the offer, or addresses that have bounced. Therefore there should be an option to exclude a list of addresses you have uploaded.
11) Bounce Management
Receiving bounced messages into an email account and removing these is a very time consuming process. Make sure your solution collects the bounces and gives you the opportunity to view a report of these showing why they have bounced that can be downloaded.
12) Resending of soft bounces
This will ensure that emails that did not get delivered because of a temporary problem such as the receiving email server was offline, will get automatically redelivered.
13) Scheduling of campaigns
The ability to schedule emails for delivery will enable you to setup and queue emails well in advance.
14) Delivery speed & Scalability
If you are sending high volumes of emails (50,000 - Several Million at a time) ensure the solution is capable by asking for a pilot campaign.
15) MIME format
Around 5% of your list cannot read HTML emails. Ensure the solution can automatically deliver a plain text alternative. This is referred to as MIME format.
16) White listing
Your supplier should take an active role in ensuring your emails will get delivered by white listing your IP address with major ISPs.
17) Personalisation
This at the most basic level should be the ability to insert Dear First Name into an email message.
18) Segmentation
The ability to send different messages to different segments will ensure that you achieve better open and clickthru rates as your messages will be more relevant.
19) A/B Split Testing
This is the ability to test and compare variables such as the subject line or content to samples of your list before delivering the best performing to the remainder of your list. This functionality will enable you to maximise your email campaign performance.
20) Reporting
As a minimum this should include:
· Statistics on total deliveries, bounces, unique opens, clickthrus and unsubscribes
· Time stamping of opens and clickthrus in order to report on recipients opening and clicking thru multiple times.
· Ability to download reports showing who opened, clicked, unsubscribed and which addresses bounced and why
· Breakdowns of the links in the email and how many times each one has been clicked upon.
21) Proven deployment of the solution
Many suppliers who are not specialists in email marketing will offer to design and develop a bespoke solution for you. This should be avoided at all costs. The wide range of solutions now available on the market means that there is a proven solution, at an affordable price with dedicated support and development teams available. A bespoke solution cannot be produced at a
price that provides the same level of functionality, reliability and support. In addition these suppliers will not be able to help you with issues such as white listing. These guidelines are a minimum you should look for to make running your campaigns smooth and getting good results from your campaigns.

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