There are many uses of e-mail, of which, two critical uses are as professional e-mail for your business and to market to your consumers. Marketing through Email is one of the most cost-effective ways to boost revenue and conversions. Besides, it helps you stay in touch with your customers. It does take a lot of efforts to create a distinguishing email campaign, which is why you might want to keep a kind of backup. An email service provider, or ESP, can help your business create and deliver emails to your specified customer base or niche, and provide profitable results.

An ESP also gives away detailed reports on the result of your email campaign. This reports provides you details on the delivery success rates, email read-rates, and link click-through rates. You can even identify the users who performed these actions. Good reporting is one of the most important features that any email service provider could assist you with, after measuring the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

Let’s check out a few things to consider before you choose an Email Service Provider.

  • Private IP address: The IP address from which the email is shot designates the origin of an email. If your service provider sends your marketing emails via a shared IP address, you’ll receive too many spam complaints which might have been registered against another customer. This could get your shared IP address blacklisted, preventing your emails from being delivered. It would take a lot of time for your email service provide to get the IP off the blacklist. It is, therefore, important for you to ensure that your ESP provides you with a private IP address.
  • Budget: You want a provider who offers you a lot of features along with dedicated support but you also want a provider who fits into your budget. So, after you’ve examined providers for the features they provide, identify a list of companies that fit your requirements as well as your budget.
  • Reputable provider: Every business wants a service provider who’d be there for the long run. Fly-by-night providers might not have close-links or associations with Internet giants like Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft. You want a provider who has associations with these providers so that your emails do not land under spam.
  • Features: Identify a list of potential email service providers and browse through the list of features they provide. Make sure the one you select provides assistance to your business now and in the future. You don’t need to have a laundry list of features in place, but there are few basic features which you’ll want to have including social media integration, scheduling, convenience, and tracking tools. You want a provider that has invested in some accreditation and authentication tools that give your emails the best chance to land in the intended inbox.
  • Customer support: Since customer service is paramount to any business, you want a provider that has an excellent support team in place to help you with any questions or concerns. Therefore, your ESP must provide you with both online and on-call customer support.
  • Infrastructure: Check if your service provider has more than one, secured high-speed internet connections through more than one source. This will ensure reliability in case any of the Internet connections fails or there is a hardware failure.