By Savicom News
Questions to Ask When Considering a New ESP
At New Year’s it is “out with the old, in with the new.” Here’s a list of must-ask questions when evaluating a new ESP this year:
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Does your chosen ESP have a relationship with the major ISPs (at minimum): Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, and Hotmail?
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These email clients are the biggest—and toughest—to get consistent inboxing. The quality of your chosen ESP’s relationship with the major ISPs can be an indicator of the level of success you’ll have to inbox there after recipients marked your emails as “spam” a few times.
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Does your ESP actually monitor inboxing at all the ISPs? How do they accomplish this?
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What is your current ESP doing to help marketers address changing industry trends?
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Mobile/responsive
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Personalized/dynamic
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Do they make it easy to personalize? Can you add personalization from within the database, or do you need to add it to creatives?
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How do they process bounces?
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Do they report on returned mail as well, or just on bounces?
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Fun fact: ISPs can accept an email, yet still not deliver it.
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Do they provide granular enough reporting to suit your needs and answer most of your data questions?
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Without satisfactory reporting, it is impossible to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns and discern market trends. Everyone has different questions and different data needs—does the ESP’s reporting answer your questions?
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What does your ESP do to protect its reputation as a sender? What do they do to help you with yours?
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ESPs have to protect their reputations as senders—and their IPs-- to get good deliverability with ISPs. No matter how clean your list is, if your ESP does not have a good reputation as a sender, your deliverability will be harmed.
