How to choose the right email service provider

Choosing an email tool has changed

Choosing an email service provider is not as straightforward as it used to be thanks to changes in the ESP landscape, some of the new changes are:

Larger vendors acquire email tools: small tools like market are getting absorbed by bigger players like Adobe.

Email tools are becoming less specialized to gain wider appeal: ESPs that used to be geared towards medium and small business like Campaign Monitor have become more up market in order to meet enterprise company needs. also primarily transactional auto responders like Sendgrid have added more functionalities as they grow.

Up and comers have shaken the market upon entry: new vendors in email service that were previously mobile marketing platforms or sales tools have expanded their offerings and now present themselves as suite alternatives and ESPs.

Why email is still a big deal

They often get a bad rap as being too spammy making it easy to think its death is near but against all odds, email marketing remains a strong driver of customer service, acquisition and customer engagement up until today especially for B2B marketers who say that it is among their top revenue generating channel.

Considerations for choosing an ESP

First dimension: size of contact list

We’ll talk about the ESPs that are tailored to different sizes of contact lists from tools that have basic email functionality for small contact lists to email marketing automation platforms that take care of large contact lists with a sophisticated drip, nurture and trigger based logic.

Second dimension: ideal for B2C vs B2B

There are also tools that focus on managing frequency of promotions and messaging specialized for the B2C audience and tools that focus on nurturing leads for B2B audiences.

Other considerations

It also important to consider ease of implementation, how well they integrate with your existing channels like CRM, performance marketing tracking, costs and so on.

Making the final call

One thing that benefits everyone from the growth of the ESP landscape is tgar all vendors cover all the basis so they have a good roster of customers to learn from. Some tools are good for some businesses based on their size or industry and some others can accomplish what you need to connect and engage with your users in a personalized way.