Why you should use an ESP
Sending email is something we take for granted. Most of us have sent email for more than a decade and I would wager we think we are pretty good at it. Sending bulk email, however, is a much different animal. There are laws and best practices that even the savviest personal emailer might not be aware of. For business, sending email is an effective tool that can drive sales, leads and website visits but can also do real harm if misused.
WHY AN ESP
Email can be sent many different ways. What makes using an ESP (email service provider) better than say blasting out an email through outlook? Here are a list of ten reasons why using an ESP makes sense.
Itâs the law (sort of) â Any commercial content (promotions, advertisements, etc) sent from a business falls under the CAN-SPAM Act and subjects that business to legal ramifications if the requirements of CAN-SPAM are not followed. ESPâs donât automatically equal CAN-SPAM compliance but they invest loads of money to make sure they do all they can to keep your email sends free from the Spam Folder including forcing you to abide by the rules.
Deliverability â ESP invest lots of money to make sure they are white-listed (approved list of IP addresses for unhindered deliverability) with many ISP (Internet Service Providers) and email providers. This can be very important as there are a variety of things that can stop an email from reaching itâs intended recipient. ESPâs generally have a process for making sure each email sent achieves its maximum deliverability.
Analytics â Using an ESP means that you can track things like email Open Rates, Bounce Rates, Inactive Emails, Click-Through Rates and other measurements that tell marketers useful information and can influence ROI. These analytics can also be used in conjunction with website analytics to give comprehensive campaign reporting.
Personalization â Since ESPâs use a database to store your email recipients, you can collect information such as name, address, store association and age to create unique personalized messages in emails sent to your subscribers.
Segmentation â You can also create entire lists based on subscriber preferences. Using this approach, subscribers can subscribe to different lists or relevant offers. This allows for a more targeted approach to email communication that saves you money, time and subscribership by sending the right offers and the right amount of email.
List management â As part of the CAN-SPAM requirements, a business must provide a way for the email recipient to âopt-outâ of receiving future email. ESPâs provide simple list management that is automatic when a personâs clicks an unsubscribe link at the bottom of an email.
Professional look â If youâve every subscribed to a large company for ongoing email offers or specials, you might have noticed that these emails look a bit different than what you can do when sending an email in Outlook. ESPâs provide email designers the ability to use HTML (the language of websites) that allows for a richer media experience than just text email.
Data integration/triggered email â Some ESPâs have the ability to integrate customer data to trigger email offers. Triggered email offers are extremely relevant as they are generated based on behavior or specific info and generally have a much higher click-through rate than non-triggered email.
Time sensitive content â Larger ESPâs have the ability to program emails to react differently based on when the email was opened or how many times an email is opened. This can be helpful for time sensitive offers. 10. A/B Testing â Getting the greatest response via email can be a delicate balance of content, visuals, time of delivery, subject lines, etc. Using an ESP makes it easy to test different combinations and compare their analytics to fine-tune your email efficiency.
DESIGNING EMAIL
Email design has become increasingly complex as new tools and standards are realized. There are multiple components that come together to create an email just like sending one. So now that weâve covered why using an ESP makes sense lets discuss the basic steps that go into a successful email send.
CTA (call to action) â The most important aspect of starting the email process is to think about what the purpose of email is. The call to action could be to educate, to purchase, to generate a lead, to click to a website or to forward to a friend. Once the CTA is identified, a clear set of analytic goals should be tracked to measure the effectiveness of the email send. This is one of the major selling points of email versus traditional media communication.
Visual design â Your emailâs visual design, often referred to as the concept, will greatly affect how the recipient responds to the CTA. Decisions regarding this phase range from how to best layout the content of the email to what color a link should be in order to get the greatest number of click throughs. Each decision regarding the visual design should reinforce the CTA and help provide a platform for content consumption. Generally a concept is created using a graphics program such as Adobe Photoshop from which graphic assets are generated.
HTML DEV â Even though emails and website use the same base language (HTML) the application of this language is VERY different. Grade A email clients like ThunderBird render HTML almost identical to modern web browsers. Grade F email clients like Eudora or Lotus Notes 7 canât even be compared to modern web browsers. So a working knowledge of popular email clients and their HTML support is necessary to ensure your message is delivered in a legible manner. This importance is further compounded when you have webbased email clients that combine web browsers with email client nuances such as the infamous Firefox and Gmail image-margin bug.
Dynamic content â This is where the real programming takes place. Making dynamic content area is possible by setting variables in your email that pull in blocks of other content or HTML stored at the ESP. These variable areas are best used with rules that correspond with the recipientâs preferences or info. Dynamic content makes it possible for one email send to serve multiple relevant messages to the entire subscriber base.
Subject line â Writing effective subject lines is often overlooked. This could be the only thing that a recipient actually reads before deleting your email. It is worth spending some time researching the most relevant words that will resonate with your audience. Often times it is better to use slang or text/chat abbreviations to get more information packed into a subject line.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Designing and sending email can be a monstrous task especially when trying to be CAN-SPAM compliant. The task becomes exponentially difficult when making sure your email is delivered safely and effectively across the mountainous landscape of HTML support for email clients and devices. Choosing professional tools and service providers is truly the only way to achieve the best ROI for your email send and spend.