Oct 272006
Selecting an ESP
Selecting an ESP
Return Path’s Ken Takahashi (formerly of DARTMail fame) wrote a great post today on the Return Path blog — the first in a series — about selecting an ESP. If you are an email marketer who is thinking about selecting an ESP, it’s a great read.
Good advice here. I’d add that one thing I’ve learned from experience on the vendor side is to make sure you’re asking the right RFP questions for your business. Try asking your marketing peers for sample RFPs so you can learn more about ways to word questions that make sense to the vendors and will make the vendor responses easier for you to digest and compare.
Full disclaimer: I work for a vendor that provides both an outsourced ASP service as well as an inhouse solution. I find there is still a lot of confusion in the marketplace about bringing a 3rd party solution in-house. The ongoing expense is often a lot lower than using an ASP, and especially for high-volume mailers, this can be compelling. There are some drawbacks to this model, though. Usually, it requires you have a good relationship with your IT/technology team to get something like this implemented, so it might be harder to gain internal buy-in. Initial cost is often also higher which requires looking at some kind of payback model compared to using an ASP.
You also want to make sure and in-house vendor is prepared to meet any servicing needs you have (i.e. account management, deliverability). Some ESPs will do this, others won’t. Return Path offers an excellent service for consulting as well (and no, Matt didn’t pay me to write that!)