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Originally Posted by WiredGuy
Hi,
I'm looking for a company or service that can manage double opt-in mailing lists on our behalf and handle all complaints/bounce backs, removals, mailings (once per day) and be canspam compliant.
We'll provide the names, email addresses, date/time of optin and IP addresses used. Any recommendations on whom to use? I don't want to handle mailings myself.
EDIT: This is for mainstream marketing and the service should be whitelisted on all major email providers (yahoo, hotmail, msn, aol, etc...)
Thanks
WG
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There are a few things to consider when you are choosing an ESP (email service provider).
1. Technology - Anybody worth discussing at all will be able to handle removes, bounces etc. Everybody will have some form of tracking. From there it gets interesting.
There are different ways to track deliveries, opens, clicks, and even conversions for the emails. Of course some of these are more accurate than others.
If you want to be able to easily split run test differing subject lines, creatives, or even personalize the email in real time that will affect your choice of ESP.
2. Deliverability - Oh so IMPORTANT! The reality of whitelists and bonded sender programs are much different in actuality than they seem at first look.
If you are on a shared IP (usually if you are spending more than about $1500/month and know what to ask for then you can get dedicated) then you need to worry about what the others sharing your IP do. How often they send, etc etc.
Creative/subject composition can make a huge difference. A good ESP will not only make sure that they send all your mail, and have good reporting, but will also provide tools and/or consulting to help make sure that you don't get blocked by filters.
This can go well beyond having the automated spam assasin scoring tool, to let you 'tune' your emails, including direct input into the creatives.
Also your ESP is in the business of managing relationships with ISPs. It's not a lot different than your experience in PPC WG. Yes supposedly 'everyone' who is a certified adwords pro has the ability to get things done correctly... blah blah blah. But in the end it turns out that there are just some people/firms with the right connections and the right volume of business. It doesn't hurt to golf with the head of the complaints dept for AOL (not me).
All the basic technology companies claim they manage the ISP relationships, but you need to learn how to look a little deeper to make a good choice.
3. Special Features - Depending on what kind of mailing this is, it might make sense for you to have some advanced tools at your disposal. Sometimes these come from the ESP, and other times it's just good to make sure the one you choose supports the tools.
If you want to use this as a customer re-engagement tool, if you want to track conversions, if you want there to be rules based (if then) autoresponders, change the creative in real time, etc etc etc then that will be a factor as well.
If this is just a simple non-revenue producing newsletter, then that might be overkill.
4. Pricing - Depending on what kind of commitments you are prepared to make, the features & services you want, your volume etc etc it will probably wind up ranging from 7c/email down to fractions of a penny.
At the high end you are just amortizing the cost of some heavy iron over the volume you send.
I personally use 5 different ESPs, and would be happy to talk to you about your specific goals/needs if you like (not selling any service).
I am not going to dish dirt on any company publicly, but you can ICQ me at 306014014, or email me
Jeff Random