Choosing How to Send Your eMails

Welcome to the first blog for eBizlessons. As I’m still working on the design of this blog, Twitter and FaceBook, I’m going to focus this week’s topic on eMail and will start writing about websites in a few weeks.

Choosing How to Send Your eMails

So, you’re ready to start sending professional eMails. You’ve been receiving eMails for years and have several ideas and hopefully good examples of the styles of eMails that you want to send, but now what do you do?

Document Your Needs

This is a very common mistake. Most people don’t take the time to review what are their requirements. They’ll simply say, I want to send an eMail and that’s it, when in a reality, they need to know:

• Who are your eMail recipients?
• How will the recipients view their eMail (i.e. AOL, BlackBerry, iPhone, Yahoo, MSN or Hotmail, Outlook, etc.)?
• What eMail styles do you want to send (i.e. announcement, invitation, newsletter, etc.)?
• Does the eMail need to be sent in multiple languages, currencies, country specific characters and layout, etc.
• Will the content need to change based on the recipient (i.e. is it dynamic so that text, images, links are different for each recipient)?
• Do you need to know analytics about each eMail send?
• Will you need to integrate your eMail system with other systems and what are those systems?

Review Your eMail Service Providers (ESP)

While building your eMails in Outlook or another eMail program is simple for basic eMails, you’ll find that there are serious limitations. This is where an eMail Service Providers (ESP) can help. ESPs typically provide the tools you need to meet your requirements, send to thousands of recipients at the same time, have releationships with Internet Service Providers (ISP) and have developed more advanced features and functionalities. Some examples of ESPs include ExactTarget, YesMail, StrongMail, and CheetahMail. While I currently use ExactTarget and most of my blog will reference ExactTarget, the selection of your ESP should be made based on your needs … which is why I said the first step is to document your needs.

Choosing the right ESP is like choosing your car. Every car can drive, the differences are the options, style, features and price. The same applies to ESPs. In fact, if you listed your requirements from 1 to 100, I would say that 95% of the ESPs will meet them. The difference is their individual cost model and the features and functionalities that they can provide that you may not need now or ever. The best recommendation is to limit the ESPs by their ability to meet your requirements, document and compare the “extra benefits that separate each ESP,” request a trial period, talk to references and make your decision based on needs, benefits, usability and costs.

Summary

As a wrap-up, the decision for the ESP is up to you and should be based on your needs.  Hopefully you've found this blog to help you with your ESP decision, but feel free to contact me with any comments or questions and remember to follow my Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/ebizlessons or by searching for the fanpage "eBizlessons" on FaceBook for daily updates to complement this blog.