Buyer's Guide

Reputation is a crucial factor in email deliverability

A frequent change of email vendors makes it difficult to establish a positive reputation to the ISPs and the email receivers. Sending your email marketing campaign from the same vendor (and the same IP address) over an extended period of time would definitely maximize your email deliverability.

Advanced marketing techniques require much richer degree of technical Integration.

A high degree of data integration is essential for advanced email marketing techniques such as automated campaigns and lifecycle marketing, which need more data to be transferred frequently, and sometimes instantaneously. Once email marketing campaign starts to run, it is difficult and impractical to change from one vendor to another.

Vendor plays an integral role in communication between you and your customers

Customer data is potentially the most valuable asset of your company. It is necessary to find an email marketing vendor who has a good reputation, integrity and technical expertise to protect and take a good care of your data. Will it always be there to serve your needs and keep up with the rapid changes in email marketing landscape?

How to Get It Started?

Identify Your Needs & Goals

Before you start searching for an email service vendor, the first thing you should do is to understand your existing e-marketing program, recognizing what you currently need and what you want to achieve in the future. Set up goals, a timeline and budget for your email marketing project.

Decide Which Level of Service You Need

How do you want to run your email marketing campaign? Do you want a full-service, self-service, or combination of the two? Your vendor, aka Software as a Service (SaaS) provider, will host an Application Service Provider (ASP) Solution for you in its own data centre and provide all maintenance, daily technical operation and support. You do not need your own hardware, software or technicians to run the application. Choose from the following ASP solutions:

• Full-Service:
  The vendor operates the email marketing application and the associated services.
• Self-Service:
  You run the application through a Web-based interface.
• Collaborative:
  You and your vendor are responsible for portions of the application and work together from email strategy, best practices, fulfillment, and creative design to marketing.

3. Prepare an Request-For-Proposal (RFP)

A good RFP will attract well-thought-out proposals and will set a comfortable working relationship with the email marketing vendor you choose. Generally, a RFP contains two major sections – Information to provide and Information to Request. Details are as follows:

I. Information to Provide

To let your prospective vendors know more about you, so they can draft a proposal that meets your needs. Information includes:

• Your Company – Company history and background, products and services, target audience, the competitive environment, ongoing marketing initiatives or business challenges etc;
• Your Email Marketing Program – Reasons for your initiatives, your goals, timeline and details of the email marketing program;
• The RFP Process – Administrative and proposal submission guidelines, a schedule for the RFP process, or even a proposal scoring system.

Try to provide your email marketing vendors as much information as possible. It would save you lots of time and discussion. If the information for disclosure is sensitive, make sure the vendors sign a non-disclosure agreement prior to receiving the full RFP.

II. Information to Request

This part is where you ask the vendors to propose solutions to the email marketing project. If you want a self-service e-marketing solution, you’d like to focus on the features and usability. For a full-service e-marketing solution, you will be probably interested in the vendor’s professional services. The following 5 sections are what you should include in this part:

• Vendor Information

  Know more about the vendor’s company history, current situation, client base and future outlook asking questions include:

  • Executive Summary: Ask a vendor to give a brief introduction on itself in 4 – 5 points, or to describe its view on the prospects of Internet and email marketing, to tell you about its personality, philosophy, its role in the industry and as a service provider.
  • Vendor Stability: Will your vendor be there for the next few years and provide you high level of email marketing services and technology? What kind of growth has the vendor experienced? Has the growth been consistent for the past 3-4 years? Perhaps the best predictor of stability in smaller firms is profitability. For larger email marketing companies, they are the least likely to go out of the business. But, you also have to know whether it has integrated with any email marketing companies.
  • Competitive Differentiation: What makes a vendor different from the others? Ask them this question and you’ll gain a better insight on each of them. Many email marketing firms may share the similar features, but we have to compare each of them on the depth and strength of those features.
• Proposed Solution

  In this part, you’ll know whether the email marketing vendors understand your needs and deliver what you want. Ask the followings in details:

  • Features: Not only focus on what features the vendor can provide, but also ask if the products keep up with the constant changes in the industry, and get a broader sense of how frequently it enhances its products in response to customer’s needs. Will the vendor’s products fulfill the capabilities you currently need and in the next 6 months to a year from now? Ask them to make a ‘roadmap’ for anticipating and staying ahead of your email marketing needs.
  • Data Security and Storage: The customer information and mailing history database is your asset. It’s important to know if your ASP’s data centre is sufficiently secure and back-up. Ask how the vendor handles data security and storage and have your own IT staff to check and confirm this for you.
  • Application Programming Interface (API): Do you need your vendor’s e-marketing program to easily connect to your other systems? API is a system which allows requests for service to be made by other computer programs, and/or allows exchange of data between them. Make sure a vendor has a long history with respect to APIs and with successful use by its customers. And ask if the vendor’s APIs fit your technical standard.
• Customer Service & Support

  What would happen if your found yourself unexpectedly short-staffed or in the peak mailing period? Can a email marketing vendor backfill your needs? Make sure you ask the vendors what supplemental services they’ll offer, or any resources available when you need them.

• References

  When you ask for references, skip over a vendor’s most popular ones. To get a better idea on how the vendor will meet your needs, ask for the names of companies with an email volume, level or type of service similar to yours, instead of the companies that operate in the same industry as you. The references should include a client of 2 or more years, a client of 6-12 months, and a client of less than 6 months. You may find some vendors refrain from disclosing specific reference information until they have passed through the initial stages of the RFP process.

• Detailed Pricing

  Many vendors would only consider delivery in the CPM (Cost per thousand), and the total cost for the project can be greater. Make sure you ask the vendors to list out all costs up-front, and also the scenario based pricing. Expect all potential charges such as image hosting, database changes, deliverability management, viral messaging, customized reporting, set-up fees, access to APIs, and deliverability monitoring. Sometimes, companies may find the volumes increase significantly as their email marketing programs grow. Getting itemized or scenario-based pricing, you’ll see an accurate picture of how much your email marketing program actually cost and what to expect for the increasing needs.

After Issuing Your RFP

Give the vendors around 3 weeks to complete and submit their RFPs. Meanwhile, you should:

• Allow open communication:

  Provide contact information for vendors to call for clarification that would work to your benefits.

• Answer questions:

  Welcome questions from the prospective vendors and provide clarification to them. Make sure they understand your request and are able to prepare an effective response.

• Ask for an in-depth demo:

  To get an in-depth demonstration on the email applications from the finalists, so you’ll know how simple or complicated the features are to set up and to use.

• Get a two-/three-hour demo from each of the 2 best finalists

  Ask the final two vendors to demonstrate according to each claim in your RFP. Provide an actual email campaign scenario, and ask them to walk you through from start to finish using their application.

• Meet the people:

  Talk with the people such as your account manager or strategists whom you will work with. Make sure you are confident in their abilities and will be able to work with them together.