University of Email by Pankaj Kumar
    Facebook Twitter Instagram
    Facebook Twitter Instagram
    University of Email by Pankaj Kumar
    Subscribe
    • CDP
    • Deliverability
      • Email Bounce Error
    • Emarketing
    • Industry updates
    • Solutions
    • About
    University of Email by Pankaj Kumar
    Emarketing

    What you should ask to your next Email Service Provider? Revealed

    Pankaj KumarBy Pankaj KumarAugust 16, 2022Updated:April 10, 20231 Comment4 Mins Read
    What to think while switching ESP

    No matter, if you’re running a start-up or you’ve established business – you’ll need help of ESP to keep communicating with your subscribers via Email. In this article we’re going to bring some key question while selecting a basic ESP.

    There are more than hundreds of ESPs in the market – you’ll need to choose those who fits you best. Luckily, you don’t need a sixth sense to choose the right ESP. Follow this checklist of questions when interviewing potential ESP partners to find the right fit. 

    There are some categories and you can brain storm yourself around that. See below

    Email Infrastructure

    This is the base. Foundation of your email marketing. Don’t hesitate to ask as many questions.

    Example questions

    • Do you offer dedicated IPs / Shared IPs? Any limitation with the IPs.
    • Do you use own MTA or third party MTA.
    • How do you help us with setting up all required authentication techniques.
    • Who manage the Feedback Loops.
    • Do you have alert setup for an issues related to Email Infrastructure (DMARC Reports, FBLs report etc)

    List Management / Segment abilities

    This is the place of your subscribers. You need to pay much attention to your ESP’s List management features.

    Example questions

    • How preference centre works on your side / How do you support this.
    • Are you able to honour subscriber’s request to reduce / increase the frequency.
    • Do you allow customize opt out user experience.
    • Do you have Global suppression list / How do you manage unsubscribes.
    • Do you have threshold set for repetitive bounces / soft bounces.
    • Flexibility to switch single opt-in vs double opt-in – along with an identifier.

    Creative Design / Content Test

    This is the place of your real shop. Your content should be aligned to industry standard.  You’ll want to ensure an ESP offers a competitive set of creative tools to help your emails make a splash. 

    Example questions

    • What kind of test features do you provide. A/B and others.
    • Ability create and modify the content with-in your platform.
    • Do you provide content scanners.
    • Do you offer responsive templates with mobile first approach.
    • What kind of dynamic content you offer.
    • Ability to run flash SALE timer.

    Sending Capabilities

    Once all above done you will want to publish. Now you’re excited to launch your email. Review your current sending processes and highlight areas that must stay consistent throughout an email service provider migration. For example, if you rely heavily on A/B testing or scheduling deployments, make sure these features are readily available and easy to use.  

    Example questions

    • Trigger / event based / one time sending.
    • Scheduled based sending.
    • Do you offer send time optimization (STO) / view time optimization (VTO)
    • Ability to pause / resume delete as fast as we can.
    • Do you provide journey builder.

    Reporting Power

    Exam is over you want a report. That too a nice reports with meaningful data.

    Example reports

    • Campaign wise reporting.
    • Subject Line analysis reports.
    • ISP wise break up.
    • Sending domain / IP wise reporting.
    • Top level bounces.
    • Access to reputation data (SNDS, GPT)

    Support Policies

    Last but one of important thing to consider. Where will you go if you ran out of an issue. Clearly, ask and set your expectation with Support plan.

    Example questions

    • Will I have a dedicated representative for questions, or will I submit questions via a ticket.
    • What is your support ticket turnaround time.
    • Will we have a dedicated deliverability team.
    • How many users will have access to the ESP interface.
    • Do you help with IP warming plan.

    Be patient with yourself. Self growth is tender, it's holy ground. There's no greater investment - Stephen Covey
    Post Views: 988
    Pankaj Kumar
    • Website
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn

    Pankaj Kumar is a senior professional holding 10+ years of experience in CRM, Email Deliverability & Marketing analytics, Deliverability onboarding and implementation. He has worked with a broad range of clients to provide strategic, data-driven guidance to increase email delivery, subscriber engagement and revenue. He also helps marketers through this blogs in preparing strategies, data Analytics, deliverability, and CRM with a passion for helping email marketers exceed subscriber expectations. You may connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kumarpankaj793/

    Related Posts

    Everything You Need To Know About First Party Data

    July 1, 2023

    Email Marketing + AI: how This is Beneficial for Consumers

    June 11, 2023

    Most lovable ways to create customer loyalty program for Email

    April 11, 2023

    1 Comment

    1. Working For Instacart on November 20, 2022 8:48 am

      Thank you!

      Reply

    Leave A Reply Cancel Reply

    Subscribe to University of Email

    * indicates required

    Most Viewed Posts
    1. Yahoo/AOL/Verizon Postmaster tool for Email Deliverability (15,238)
    2. Transfer your email from Yahoo to Gmail (7,777)
    3. Gmail postmaster tool – a dashboard for the senders (2,974)
    4. You may love this update from Gmail (Gmail annotations) (2,307)
    5. How to add your brand logo to your email in Gmail (1,732)
    Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn
    © 2023 University of Email. Designed by BirdServer Technologies.

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

    Please wait...

    Subscribe to our newsletter

    Want to be notified when our article is published? Enter your email address and name below to be the first to know.
    SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTER NOW