In today\u2019s networked economy, a suppliers’ hiccup can very well leave you with the broken pieces of missed conversions or – even worse – disappointed clients.<\/p>\n
But it is hard to get a feel for the reliability of an email marketing service provider when you haven\u2019t worked with them before. Why is the reliability of an email marketing vendor so important?<\/p>\n
Reliability of an email platform is very important in day-to-day operations. The end-users who work with the email platform must be able to trust it to always be available. Email marketers are often on tight schedules and killer deadlines. A small problem with just the interface can easily cost an hour, up to the better part of a day. Those lost hours are all opportunity costs, better spent actually doing email marketing or anything else for that matter. Not to mention the stress and additional problems caused by email platform failure.<\/p>\n
Reliability problems go beyond internal costs or lost hours. If you receive an email and the links aren\u2019t working or the pictures won\u2019t display. This isn\u2019t always because of lack of testing. Problems with the email messages can be (technical) problems with the platform as well. Costs can escalate quickly if there is a problem with email rendering, tracking or inability to properly send. Missed marketing opportunities, generated customer service calls, damage to your brand; it adds up. And you might not have thought about that when calculating the total cost of your email platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n Reliability is one of those things that you didn\u2019t know was important until it wasn\u2019t there. Anywhere up until a first glitch you might find that a 99.5% uptime is great. But this means an email marketing vendor can be offline almost 2 days a year, without breaking his promises. All suppliers make mistakes and have problems sometimes, even your Email marketing vendor. But you shouldn\u2019t be the one who pays the price for it. And while these costs are usually not calculated in any email marketing budget, it\u2019s good to know where they originate from.<\/p>\n Although uptime is just one of the factors that make an ESP reliable, uptime statistics are a good indicator for conscious work on reliability. Through the use of back-ups, failbacks and monitoring systems a platform can be designed to reliably perform. Even if parts or services aren\u2019t available. Attempting to have as many 9s behind the comma (99,999%?) on their uptime as they can.<\/p>\n A reliable email marketing vendor has an always on e-mail marketing platform ready for you to successfully create and deploy your e-mail marketing campaigns. But also the service and response times are very important in assessing the reliability of an ESP. So what are we looking at when assessing the reliability of an Email marketing vendor? Basically it’s prevention, performance, response and repair<\/strong>. Look at the list below, do you know if these services are available to you? Some ESPs will include these costs in your overall vendor fee, other charge extra for them. Good to know when picking or evaluating an email marketing vendor.<\/p>\n Support crew<\/strong><\/p>\n Platform<\/strong><\/p>\n Response<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/span>The <\/strong>6 9s of <\/strong>email marketing vendor uptime <\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>Important factors in evaluating reliability
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/span>Look for:<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>SLA and Accountability of your <\/strong>email marketing vendor<\/span><\/h2>\n