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Top 10 things your email vendor won't tell you

By Bo Chipman and Scott Sutton

When selecting an ESP, many marketers aren't aware of the small details that may prevent them from optimizing returns. Take a look at the issues that can pop up when executing a non-standard campaign.


Do you understand what goes on "behind the scenes" at your email service provider (ESP)? Many marketers do not, and this can prevent them from optimizing returns and avoiding potential disasters.
This article outlines some of the key issues we have encountered while providing strategic consulting to Fortune 500 companies. When your ESP promises they can handle the following tasks, it's time to investigate further to ensure they can actually deliver.

Scott Sutton is director, account management, client services at Merkle.
In the beginning, email service providers were simply that -- service providers. Scores of small companies were content to provide the technological backbone and knowledge required to support simple email programs. As email increased in importance, marketers began to demand more of their email programs, and providers saw an opportunity to expand their offerings. Now the top ESPs claim to provide one-stop services for all email needs, but is this really the case? Here's what they won't tell you, and what you should make sure to ask about when determining the right ESP for your needs.
1. Strategy: Most ESPs are good at maximizing your email-specific marketing goals. However, single channel strategies are no longer sufficient. Many ESPs do not have the experience to develop holistic customer strategies that integrate effectively across channels.
2. Analytics: For many ESPs, analytics means campaign reporting. While this is important, high performance email programs require more advanced analytics. Many ESPs cannot execute complicated analyses or build models that predict customer behavior.

3. Test design: Simple subject lines are a necessity in today's email strategy -- and most ESPs can handle that process. However, when we move beyond ad hoc tests, ESPs generally have limited expertise in sophisticated test design, particularly for tests involving multiple factors.
4. Test execution: Email touches are at a premium, and most programs struggle to devote adequate circulation to testing. Complex experimental designs (DOE) can resolve this issue by efficiently testing multiple variables. Unfortunately, many providers struggle to execute complex test designs.
5. Hold-out groups: Control groups (hold-outs, or business-as-usual controls) are a critical component for any testing program. Most ESPs can select control groups, but they often lack processes and procedures for ensuring that control groups are re-integrated into the program when the test ends.
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6. Contact governance: Email marketers generally agree it is critical to regulate the number of emails that consumers receive. In practice, however, ESPs often have difficulty incorporating triggered messages or other non-standard programs into a comprehensive contact governance system. Existing email platforms were not designed to provide this kind of flexibility, and processing times often make execution unfeasible for large marketing programs.
7. Segmentation: Any discussion of relevance must begin with customer segmentation, whether that segmentation occurs at an aggregate level or on a "one-to-one" basis. Meaningful segmentation requires access to a wide array of consumer demographic and behavioral data that may change frequently. Not all providers are equipped to handle the number of attributes or the required update frequency, particularly when dealing with large email populations.

8. Multi-touch campaigns: The purpose of segmenting consumers is to provide customized communications. Optimizing email performance requires sending different communication streams to different consumers and changing these streams when consumers exhibit certain behaviors (e.g., click or purchase). Many providers have a hard time creating and maintaining groups that will receive special multi-touch programs. An even smaller set have the capacity to seamlessly move consumers from one stream to another.

9. Campaign management tool(s): ESPs often claim that their tools make executing segmented communications effortless, and their sales demonstrations often seem to bear that out. Executing in real-world marketing, however, often proves more difficult. It may turn out that seamless execution through the tool requires hours of back-end work to set up in the database. It's important to see how tools perform on real data with real, complex campaigns.

10. Data management: Providers generally understand the importance of integrating email data into broader consumer marketing databases. In theory, this is a relatively simple matter of exchanging data. In practice, many ESPs are good at loading data into their tools, but struggle getting it back out.
This is not an exhaustive list of potential challenges, so it's prudent to ask probing questions whenever you feel you might need your ESP to execute non-routine tasks. Marketers should pay close attention to customer preference management, email hygiene and ISP relationship management, among other areas.
Although the industry faces challenges meeting ever expanding client demands, the situation isn't dire. Most ESPs provide excellent service, and they generally shine when it comes to the nuts and bolts of pushing undifferentiated emails. When it comes to more complex tasks, marketers need to clearly understand their ESPs' limits and develop strategies to fill any gaps. Marketers that do not take this approach will not maximize email program performance.

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