We did research on the differences in satisfaction and what to look for in both. Let’s dig in.

Best-of-Breed or All-in-One, you have to choose.

The world of email technology is going through a revolution.

As a marketer, you have more options than ever for technology to help you build an effective email marketing programme. That’s the good news, but that’s also bad news. Having more options means it is harder to find the right technology partners amongst all the options.

A quick scroll through the Marketing Automation and Email Providers section on this site shows you a bewildering array of solutions and providers to send, track and analyse email.

How do you start with your selection? The best way of selecting will depend, but you do know it forces you to decide whether you need an all-in-one marketing suite, or if you better go with a Best-of-Breed email tool.

You’ll discover the solution that’s right for you based on a clear strategy for using technology and what you need to gain from it.

Movement in the ESP market has changed the story

The email technology landscape changes continuously. ESP mergers and acquisitions have led to the rise of the all-in-one marketing suite. The all-in-one promises to be the Swiss Army knife of digital technology, hosted in the digital cloud.

The biggest player in this space is Salesforce. Other examples of classic all-in-one suites include Oracle, Adobe and IBM.

The top 10 most popular ESPs now own about 63% of the global email marketing market. Litmus predicts the share could grow to 66% by the end of 2019 as larger tech companies buy or merge with other platforms. Litmus also predicts more users will abandon homegrown email platforms. More companies will move to using only one ESP to send marketing messages instead of using multiple ESPs and fragmenting their email programmes across three or more services.

Marketing suite vendors: Functions over flexibility

Marketing suites promise marketers the ability to consolidate and automate email marketing, lead acquisition and nurturing and other marketing functions with a single dashboard of integrated tools.

Although suites take much of the complexity out of technology use, especially for companies that don’t have tech staffs large enough to research and create their own technology stacks, they have several drawbacks:

• Integrating the suite with your company’s database and other systems can take significant IT involvement (and time) to achieve, offsetting the money saved by not paying for several different subscription services.
• The convenience and functionality of a single dashboard can come at the cost of flexibility and utility. You can end up with tools that don’t meet your needs, and you can’t pick other Best-of-Breed vendors to go with your Best-of-Breed email tool.
• One tool in your suite might be a “Best-of-Breed,” but it’s not necessarily the one your digital marketing programme relies on.

User satisfaction is lowest among suite vendors: That’s what we learned when we surveyed email marketers around the world.

• Our Email Vendor Satisfaction Survey discovered that marketing suites rate highest for functionality compared with small to medium-size ESPs and enterprise-level ESPs.
• Suite users are more likely to be unhappy about the costs, complexity and customer service and were more dissatisfied.
• Suite users are less likely to use half or more of the tools and features in their marketing suite. 27% of medium-size to enterprise-level ESPs said they use 60% or more of the tools in their platform compared with 22% of suite users.

Best-of-Breed: Choosing the best tool for how you do email

If email is the backbone of your entire marketing operation, your email platform must help you perform at the highest levels. A Best-of-Breed tool is one that focuses on being the best in its niche, whether for email, social media, personalisation, analytics, or real-time content.

There are multiple reasons why you would choose for Best of Breed solution for email marketing software in your Marketing technology stack.

Ayal Menaged from Ongage, elegantly describes three key benefits to Best of Breed:

“A best-of-breed solution provides three key benefits.

First, best fit to ones given needs.

Second, by mixing and matching different components, the solution is much more flexible and agile. The individual building blocks can be more easily updated, upgraded and swapped, without affecting other component systems.

And finally, it is possible to incorporate specialized pieces, with greater strengths than would ordinarily be possible.”

You can descide which of the considerations weighs more in your own situation. Consider the pros and cons of each.

The main pros and cons of best-of-breed at a glance:
+ The software systems themselves offer exactly what you are looking for
+ Low cost per software system
+ Simple and therefore fast to use
+ The ability to build your own bespoke tech stack made up of multiple Best-of-Breed solutions

– Multiple suppliers with multiple relationships to manage
– No one vendor to take responsibility for connection failures
– Your business processes need to be tailored to the different software systems

The promise of integration

Note that with the Best-of-Breed solutions, the integration with other systems needs to be at the level you need, but this is also true of All-in-One cloud vendors as well. For these all-in-one solutions are often built out of multiple components or technologies they acquired over the years, and as such their internal integrations are sometimes not as seamless as you would expect.

“Best-of-Breed” email tools are not all alike

Best-of-Breed tools vary quite dramatically. For one you have to consider the range of the solution and how it will fit into your complete stack.
Full-service ESPs,bundle front-end services such as content, analytics and reporting with a back-end delivery service. An example is Tripolis, with whom we partnered in the vendor satisfaction research.

On the other end of the spectrum are SMTP delivery vendors, who only do the delivery of your emails and need to be connected to another system to do so. Sometimes the solution is a combination with a front end marketing platform such as Ongage, which allow users to connect to multiple SMTP services.

Strategy helps you choose the best Email Service Provider

Our email vendor satisfaction report uncovered one especially unsettling statistic: Fewer than half of all marketers follow a written marketing strategy.

Why does this matter? Because those who create a roadmap for using technology are more likely to let business needs lead strategy rather than new features. Marketers end up with the wrong email platform when they let tactics like flashy new technology features guide their decisions.

We need to think strategy when choosing email marketing technology. When you map out a rationale for using technology, you’ll end up with a better tool. A platform that is more likely to make your email programme more efficient and drive more revenue.

Let your needs rule the decision

Take the time to assess what you need from your technology providers instead of simply accepting an all-in-one package from a marketing suite or even an ESP. This will help you build the email platform that will become one of your strongest business partners.

The post Best-of-Breed or All-in-One marketing software, which serves you better? appeared first on Email vendor selection.

But once marketers make their choices how satisfied are they with those platforms? We did the research, here is how you can use the outcomes to help you make your own selection.

How satisfied are marketers with their ESP?

The answer is complicated, according to the Email Marketing Vendor Satisfaction Report. The report is based on a survey of email marketers my company conducted in partnership with the email technology provider Tripolis.

We wanted to learn what marketers thought of the email services they use and the factors that drive their satisfaction or dissatisfaction. What we learned will not only help you compare your experiences with your peers but also guide you in your own vendor choices.

This article will explain marketer attitudes toward their email service providers and provide tips on how you can use that information to improve your own email vendor selection process.

7 stats that measure marketer satisfaction with their email marketing platforms

Here’s a snapshot of findings from the report.

1. 14% of respondents say they are “not at all dissatisfied” with their services.
2. 8% selected “Not at all satisfied” when asked to choose the email features that they like the most about their platforms.
3. Users most appreciate their ESP’s functionality and features (29%) and ease of use (22%).
4. Marketers are most dissatisfied with the user-unfriendliness of their platform (18%), having to pay extra to use new features (17%) and interactions with their account representatives (16%).
5. Most marketers are not getting full value from their email platforms. Although 74% say they get their money’s worth, only 49% of all marketers use more than half of the features of their email platforms.
6. Marketers choose their platforms primarily for functionality and features (19%). But the ability to integrate the platform with existing software came in at No. 2 (15%), followed by cost (13%).
7. 14% of marketers say they inherited the platform when they joined their marketing teams.

Marketers choose ESP features over pricing

We were encouraged to see that marketers searching for new email marketing platforms did not go right to the pricing page first. It means that marketers are weighing important usability factors such as functionality and features and ability to integrate with existing systems and tools instead of seeking out the cheapest option.

Looking beyond pricing is important because you might end up spending more money than you save if you have to pay staff to troubleshoot integration problems. Going with a less-costly but less-functional platform means you also might have to pay extra to use advanced features within your platform or to add third-party plug-ins. So much for the savings!

6 steps to find the right ESP

Now, here’s how you can use the findings in this report when you start your search for a new email marketing vendor.

1. Perform an audit to identify missed opportunities.

It’s easy to gravitate toward an email platform that sports the latest technology like real-time messaging, inbox interactivity, AI and machine learning. One session with a clever vendor at an email conference can have you signing up for a demo before you know it.

Before you do that, however, audit your own email platform and your data and delivery capabilities to see if you are actually missing opportunities now within your own tool set.

Tech vendors have long lamented that many of their customers don’t use everything the platform allows, and our research bears that out: 51% of marketers are using only half or fewer of the features that come standard on their platforms.

Automation and Email segmentation features are among those that often go unused on email platforms. See what your platform offers now that you’re not using.

2. Know where you want to go and when you want to get there.

Your ESP audit should reveal not just the missed opportunities but also the things you would like to do but can’t, given the limitations of your present email platform.

Set up a planning session so you can identify the directions you want to take your email programme, what you will need internally to get there (such as data you don’t collect or have access to now and content you would need to create) and when you want to achieve these goals.

From the report we found that (only) 19% of marketers choose an email marketing platform based on functionality and features. Although features are the most cited, don’t be “that” marketer that disregards this keystone part of the selection.

3. Create your strategy.

One dismaying statistic that came out of our research was the low priority given to strategic planning.

Only 45% of marketers follow a written strategy. We strongly advocate developing a cohesive strategy to make business decisions because you’re less likely to be distracted by irrelevant or unproven developments, like “shiny toy” technology that doesn’t work out for you in the long run.

However, we were pleased to see that those who do map out a strategic plan will call upon that strategy when reviewing new technology and platform features.

Marketers end up with the wrong email platform when they allow tactics like new technology features to guide their strategic decision-making.

Even a self-driving car needs guidance to reach its destination. Your marketing strategy is that guidance. So think strategy, not tactics when choosing your email marketing technology. Otherwise, you’re just wandering from pillar to post and wondering why your goals continue to elude you.

Follow these four steps in order to create a workable marketing strategy that will support your business goals:

• Set your business goals. Most likely it will be a company-wide revenue target, such as a 20% increase in profits for the year.
• Set your marketing objectives to support the goal. These are tied to different stages in the customer lifecycle, such as higher sales, more new customers or lower churn.
• Create your strategies to achieve your objectives. These can be finding new ways to attract new customers, sell more products at full price or reduce the time lag from awareness to action.
• Choose tactics that will carry out your strategies Here’s where you get down to the nitty-gritty, such as improved opt-in features, cart- and browse-abandonment programmes, reactivation plans and real-time content.

4. Create a unique Request for Proposal

If you’ve never written a Request for Proposal, which you will send out to prospective vendors, you could start with a default RFP template, but take extra time to create questions that reflect your unique needs, goals, priorities and strategies. This is very important.

Be as specific as you can about what you are seeking in a new technology platform, what your expectations and limitations will be and what you hope to achieve with your tech platform.

5. Score your RFP responses

Some questions will be more important than others. Weight the questions according to the priorities you outlined when building your RFPs. For example, if you use Dynamic Content on a daily basis, then ease of use for this feature will be very important, even mandatory for you – state it as being so. Those who only score 1 or 2 out of 5 for this feature will very likely not make the cut. Then determine your top three prospective vendors.

6. Invite vendors to present demos last

Did you notice something? The demo is the last item on our list.

Most email marketing service providers companies would love to do the demo first, which allows them to control more of the conversation. But, by leaving the demo to the last, you will have a clearer idea of what kinds of platforms will best meet your needs.

The research showed that 1% of marketers said that “the demo really sold them” as main purchase reason. But starting out with demo’s minus the previous steps, will certainly lead to a general look at the platform, as the provider is unable to deliver a bespoke demo to your needs. This can be problematic, both for you and then, when we know that canned demo’s are less effective than tailored demo’s.

We also recommend that you have an expert on-hand during the demo who can delve in deeper when needs be or question/clarify something that may not be clear. It’s also advisable to have your potential Account Manager from the vendor present during the demo as this will ensure the vendor’s salesperson doesn’t promise you the world and is unable to deliver it

Concluding thoughts on Email Marketing Vendor Satisfaction

An email platform is more than just a device to send email – or a dashboard with a bunch of buttons, some of which you push and others whose uses remain a mystery you don’t have time to investigate.

An email service provider can be a significant partner in your email programme’s success or a major hindrance to its growth, whether you use a homegrown solution your company developed itself, a platform provided by an email service or one of several marketing tools bundled into a multi-function technology suite.

By taking time to map out what you need from your technology providers – not just email but all of your marketing tools – you will be more likely to find the email platform that will become a strong business partner.

The Email Marketing Vendor Satisfaction Report has more statistics and insights that reflect the state of play with technology vendors and the issues marketers face. You can download it here.

The post How to get more Email Marketing Vendor Satisfaction [research and 6 step plan] appeared first on Email vendor selection.

I’d like to start with one major consideration: The technology you choose must support, enable and advance your objectives and strategies. Too often, it’s the reverse.

A marketer jumps on a shiny and new feature and then has to come up with a reason for justifying the investment. That’s when marketing programs go astray.

Maybe it wasn’t your choice. Your CEO could be a victim of “Get Me One of Those”-syndrome, and suddenly you are under pressure to find a use for the shiny new toy he just brought you.

Avoiding MarTech buyer’s remorse

Choosing a new email or marketing automation platform is like being invited to pick out your own Christmas present from an array of tempting goodies. Will you pick the one that makes you happy? Or, will you end up with buyer’s remorse?

It’s so easy to be dazzled by all the capabilities an email platform promises, especially now, when advanced technology is financially viable for almost every email marketer. This one built in real-time testing and reporting! That one sends your message out to multiple channels all at once. The other one builds your emails automatically. Just hit “send!”

And that’s where the trouble begins, we all too often lead with technology. Technology is tactical. But leading with strategy to achieve an objective and aided by technology is what drives consistent success. My mantra has always been “Lead with strategy, not with technology”.

How to make strategic and technology planning mesh for success

My new report from Econsultancy, “The Fundamentals of Email Marketing,” includes background and action plans for the successful pairing of strategic and technology planning.

Why is this so important? Econsultancy’s 2016 email census found that just 3 in 10 marketers use the email data provisions their platforms provide.

This raises many questions. Is it because they just don’t know how? Did they sign on with their vendors before thinking it through and realizing they either didn’t collect the data they needed for high-level personalization or didn’t know how to make their customer databases and email platforms talk with each other?

Strategic planning makes the technology use more fruitful.

Even a little bit of strategic planning can make the technology use more fruitful.

Here’s another statistic: Most marketers use only 30 percent of an email platform’s capabilities. But they’re paying for 100 percent of that platform.

Lack of education and training might be one explanation for this, but also, many features don’t have a place yet in the marketer’s strategy playbook.

If you have always relied on broadcast email (1:everyone) but want to move to 1:1 email, just signing with a top-of-the-line vendor is not going to make it happen.

Crash course on strategic planning and technology

Your marketing program planning has three components: an objective, a strategy and tactics. All three together are like a journey:

1. The objective is your destination.
2. Strategy is your road map to the destination.
3. Tactics are the kinds of vehicles that will get to your destination.
4. Technology is the vehicle itself.

Don’t settle on your technology choices until you know how they will either fit in with or advance your own strategic plan.

3 tips to get more from your email platform

Besides helping setting up a strategy that will guide your technology decisions, you also want to work with your ESP to get more out of your email platform. (Trust me – they want you to use all those features and capabilities, because they will help you succeed. As the saying goes, they succeed when you succeed!)

Here are a few tips from the guide:

1. Get help troubleshooting problems. Your ESP will have access to data and you can expect it to share what it sees on its systems and servers. One advantage of the ESP (an outsourced broadcast platform) is that it is well equipped to handle feedback loop setup and have a good grasp of best practices.

2. See better results. Marketers who have launched even basic segmentation and triggered emails, either on their own or by using the automation tools their ESPs or agencies offer, find it pays off in higher engagement and revenue.

3. Resolve worries about new programs, especially testing. Testing can be a scary or unknown strategy for many marketers. They don’t know how to set up and run tests, worry about the cost, time or lost sales, or aren’t familiar with the available testing technologies in email or automation platforms. Your ESP or tech vendor has people standing by to answer your questions, show you how to set up and learn from tests and make sure you get all the value you pay for.

Eight stages of successful email marketing

Connecting strategy to technology for success, is something that I always recommend. Next to that, you want to walk through eight stages of successful email marketing, from Objectives and Strategy through to Deliverability Optimization.

Do let me know your thoughts in the comment space below.

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