Every additional vendor takes up time and effort. Especially down the road, where you are looking at each of them in more detail. A small business owner, who has need to send a few newsletters often will take a different route and not do a structured selection, but rather look at several (cheap) email tools<\/a>, see what if a self-service trial is enough. <\/p>\n So where to draw the line? How many Email service providers should you go through an in-depth evaluation with, and at the end invite to pitch or present their solution? Read on to find out…<\/p>\n On the side of the Email service provider<\/a>, the number of competitors is an issue too. An email marketing pitch with many competitors diminishes the chance of them winning. They don\u2019t want to put in (too much) effort in those cases. And it can be very valuable to have an enthusiastic ESP during the selection, that is willing to go the extra mile. Every ESP prefers to be in a selection with only a small number of others.<\/p>\n Smart business developers (aka salespeople) who work at ESPs would try and probe a bit for that nugget of \u201cwho else is in there\u201d information. But if they don\u2019t, how about you make sure to positively manage expectations and speak out that you want them to make the effort.<\/p>\n So the benefits of being selective upfront is that it saves you time and brings you extra value<\/b>. But how to do that and how selective should you be?<\/p>\n First off, it is important to see what we would call a shortlist\/pitch. I am referring to the final stage(s) of the selection process. Marketers come to have high expectations, maybe sometimes too high of email marketing service providers when it comes to pitches. It takes quite some effort from both sides to go through an an Request for Proposal (RFP)<\/a>, demos<\/a> and presentations.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t mean you shouldn\u2019t browse around and search first. Maybe you are not experienced at all, or it has been a while since you looking into the market for new MarTech. It is good to get a feel for the market and all the players. <\/p>\n So it starts with your bulk list<\/strong> (all in the category, very limited filtering) and then your long list (first filtering, strike out on knock-out criteria). The trick is to filter it down as fast as possible.<\/p>\n The total number of email service providers<\/a> is over 450. So just only looking through the complete list of ESPs<\/a> is already a big task, but there is a solution. <\/p>\n When a company approaches me to guide their selection, they sometimes already started on their own \u201cawkward” short list, that don’t make a lot of sense. Often enough because they group together candidates that are in very different categories. That indicates that there maybe is no real sense of the requirements or they don\u2019t yet know what type of ESP or Marketing Automation provider they are looking for.<\/p>\n You can already narrow it down a lot by starting your long list based on the type of email marketing solution<\/a> that is best for you.<\/p>\n Alternatively, it also happens that vendors are misjudged and got on the shortlist \u2013 for instance, because of features they list on their site (but don\u2019t really have).<\/p>\n Getting some help in selections can greatly speed up that process.<\/b> As an experienced consultant can shorten your list using proper knock-out criteria (the criteria that lead to immediate elimination).<\/p>\n But let\u2019s start with a rule of the thumb: Going from a long to a short list of email marketing vendors requires a better and clearer definition of what you want. Note that we aren\u2019t up to the pitching yet, the short list should only contain candidates that are real candidates to invite. Now that is the difference.<\/p>\n Your short list should contain a maximum of anywhere from 3 to 5 esps<\/b>. That is the maximum, having less is perfectly alright. If you can restrict it further before really getting into a \u2018selection mode\u2019, narrow it down.<\/p>\n Hitting a number of 4-5 potentials and you are done. But possibly you still have a few that don\u2019t seem to perfectly fit, but possibly could be a fit…. hmmmm…. What to do with those?<\/p>\n This is also where the expertise comes in, as an experienced consultant or agency that does this selection more often has less to investigate (they already know from experience or can quickly find out).<\/p>\n But if you are going at it alone, decide to either investigate further or put them on an \u201con hold to investigate\u201d part of the list. Those reserves can be activated if there is no satisfactory solution found from the short list you had made.<\/p>\n Be sure to write down your arguments when NOT selecting an Email service provider at this point, general good plus bad points you came across. You might find that your requirements could change over time. In that case, it is good to know why you eliminated certain vendors. <\/p>\n This also helps to share and get more of your colleagues to add their 2 cents. They can comment on \u201copinions\u201d by making them explicit. So you don\u2019t get any colleagues going for the \u201clet\u2019s take a step back\u201d or (unintentionally) sabotage the process.<\/p>\n Based on the complexity, scope, and size of the project you would like to investigate further and talk to some of the email service providers. You might want to go out and see online demo\u2019s and their website to be able to do a sanity check if vendors really can fulfill the requirements and supply the service you were looking for. Some might not cut it, and can safely be removed from the shortlist.<\/p>\n Now with the shortlist in your hand, do you have any favorites? Think about how confident you are, this also depends on the experience with both email marketing and the selection process. Ask 2 to 4 email vendors to present their case and pitch.<\/p>\n Less confident, looking for a more creative solution or have a more complex or high stake situation? In that case, you might want to look into 3-6 email suppliers to pitch on your project. If you want to deviate from the numbers given in this article, trust me, it isn\u2019t necessary to invite more. <\/p>\n Make sure that the vetting part is done right and you have a high-quality selection of ESPs in your pitch that will match the profile you were looking for.<\/p>\n In the end, always follow this simple truth when inviting ESPs to your pitch: After posting this article on Linkedin, an interesting conversation where multiple online marketing specialists shared their views: <\/p>\n Chris Marriott<\/a> President & Founder at Email Connect<\/b> For the RFPs we manage with our clients we usually start with 8 ESPs. We cut that down to 4 after scoring the RFP responses, and those 4 get to present their solutions to the use cases we’ve developed. Then it’s down to 2 for the sand boxes.<\/p>\n Panos Ladas<\/a>, Online Marketing & E-commerce Expert at ON.Marketing:<\/b> Talk to 5 vendors and you will find 2 vendors that are big and similar, 2 that are very creative and interesting and 1 that is probably trying to disrupt the market. In every case, this will bring out a better outcome than a more narrow approach to it (although it does take more effort)<\/p>\n<\/span>Service providers love it when you know what you are looking for<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>The four vendor selection stages for email service providers<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"vendor-selection-stages\"](\"https:\/\/www.emailvendorselection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/vendor-selection-stages.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/span>How long should your ESP long list be?<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nIf your long list has more than 20 Email Service providers, it isn\u2019t a long list. It\u2019s a bulk list and you haven\u2019t been selective enough. Keep your long list to a maximum of 12.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/span>Narrowing the view, when the email selection gets more serious<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"how](\"https:\/\/www.emailvendorselection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/howmany_email_vendors_selected.jpg\" "\\"howmany_email_vendors_selected\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/span>The email marketing pitching begins, sort of<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>A high-quality group of Email service providers selected<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nInvite as little as you can and as many as you need.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/span>What do the Experts say?<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nGreat article, Jordie. I agree that your initial list should not be too limited. <\/p>\n
\nProbably 5. It is not easy but it makes a lot of sense. If you go for only 3 then 2 of the 3 are very similar in capabilities, experience, price and you won’t benefit from the extensive experience out there. <\/p>\n