At Ad:Tech in San Francisco I spent a good deal of time interviewing e-mail service providers (ESP’s) and narrowing down the field for a client who plans to embark on what is considered a low-volume e-mail marketing campaign (fewer than 50,000 e-mails a month). Below are some of the vendors I interviewed and evaluated, and how they stacked up.
There’s no shortage of ESP’s out there. Just search Google for ‘e-mail marketing’ – it can be overwhelming just looking at the options. Then try comparing those vendors – it’s not easy. The good news is that when there are this many options it often means that there is at least one vendor that will do what you want, possibly even at a fair price.
My client has an internally managed client e-mail list (they don’t currently purchase any e-mail addresses). The list is currently about 20,000+ contacts, growing at a rate of about 1,000 contacts per month. As I stated above, this is small potatoes in the world of e-mail marketing. I was looking for something entry-level, but scalable, so the solution could grow with the client. A lot of the ESPs who were represented on the Ad:Tech expo hall were targeting top-tier customers (500,000 or more e-mails per month). Not what I was looking for. But I did talk to a few of those bigger players before finding what I needed – they had surprisingly good input for me (regarding the smaller players) after they found out I wasn’t a prospective client of theirs, or of their competitors. Here are the vendors I evaluated (and a few others that came recommended):
Responsys: Reponsys’ strong points – so I am told – are their powerful and easy to use user interface (UI) and an available API (which will allow your developers to integrate 3rd party systems with their email system). More than one individual on the tradeshow floor told me Responsys had ‘better features’ than Datran.
Datran Media: Had a huge presence at Ad:Tech. Everywhere you look – Datran. Like Responsys, they have an API, but both SilverPop and Responsys have a reputation for being more full-featured. The Datran demo makes their solution look easy to use – the user interface was well laid out. An associate of mine says “I was really impressed by Datran. They took great care to ensure that their messaging was on point and ran all ad copy by their legal team. They also built their own creative which was run through an online approval process to help keep things streamlined. The team I worked with were very responsive and made my job really easy – all I had to do was give them targeting info and some ideas on how to do the messaging and they really did take care of the rest.” Not a bad testimonial.
Silver Pop: Silverpop offers better pricing than either Datran or Responsys. They also have an excellent reputation, and I was referred to Silverpop a couple times by ESP’s who only work with very large clients…which tells me they have a good reputation, even among competitors. SilverPop is apparently more scalable than most ESP’s, meaning you can start with a mid-sized campaign, and the features and pricing can grow with your need. I got great feedback about these guys, and they made my short list. Ultimately our campaign was still too small, though.
Exact Target: ExactTarget can be an excellent entry level, scalable solution. They were a true candidate for my client, but technological contraints didn’t allow us to take full advantage of their list management capabilities. One of Exact Target’s strengths is its award winning appexchange integration with Salesforce CRM. ExactTarget can use Salesforce as the “system of record” for e-mail marketing campaigns, allowing existing users of Salesforce to make minimal changes to their current systems and processes.
Constant Contact: Ok, so I didn’t talk to a Constant Contact rep at Ad:Tech, but I’ve received a number of e-mails from their customers, and I was impressed enough by the low price point to do a little research on them. Turns out they have one of the lowest starting price points in the industry (as low as $15/month), and their pricing scales and adjusts monthly based on the volume of your contact list. It is a shared IP address solution, however, (meaning your email deliverability may not be as high as with some of the more expensive vendors). The day after I wrote this I received an e-mail update about Ad:Tech Miami. Guess who Ad:Tech used to deliver the e-mail? Hint: ConstantContact.
Update (4/11/2008): A number of people shared with me that VerticalResponse had performed well for their e-mail marketing campaigns, and since pricing was on par with ConstantContact we compared the two side by side. Ultimately, based on its close integration with Salesforce CRM, we switched to VerticalResponse for our own newsletters shortly after.
Options Media got a hold of my contact information at Affiliate Summit in Miami somehow. And just recently one of their sales reps got me to walk through a demo of their system online. Right off the bat I was wondering how long these guys had been in the biz. I figured it couldn’t be that long if their user interface looked like it did. But their rep assured me they’ve been doing e-mail marketing and list management since 1998. Anyway, while their e-mail management interface is sorely lacking in friendly features like drop-down lists and selection options – it does offer some very nice features like demographic targeting, the ability to send certain e-mails only to people who have opened previous e-mails, easy A/B split testing (without uploading separate e-mail lists), and of course dedicated IP addresses. Their pricing is based on volume, and starting at about 1,000,000 e-mails for $975 per month, they’re among the higher volume service providers I’ve mentioned here. If you have a small team of creative developers and you have the manpower to take advantage of all the features Options Media offers, I can see where the cost might be justified.
Cooler Email, Topica and Virtumundo have all come up in conversation, but I have very little information about any of them.
I hope this list serves as a starting point for you if you’re looking to evaluate some reputable ESPs. Good luck with your e-mail marketing campaign.
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