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Last month, EmailLabs partnered with Habeas to provide email delivery tracking directly in our interface (EmailLabs Partners With Habeas). We are not the first company to partner with a delivery monitoring provider, but I believe we are the first to provide the data in a real-time API-synched process.
This means we will be able to provide even more reporting data to marketers on demand, as campaigns are sent and tracked. I believe this is the direction where the email marketing service industry is moving.
As legitimate email marketing grows, the number of service bureaus and the products they offer will grow with it. Several years ago, the hot topic was email tracking and segmented messaging. Today, the focus has shifted to integration with other technologies and reporting information.
To accommodate the marketer’s needs, firms now specialize in email deployment, content creation, authentication, compliance and delivery assurance.
The email service providers, the workhorses of this industry, will be expected to integrate all of the needs of today’s marketer into their application. Some will partner with companies to provide price breaks and mutual logins. The winners will tie the separate services into one product.
What does this mean to the marketer? Your email service provider will be able to give you more information to work with and empower you to make even more use of this medium.
Email is already an extremely versatile marketing tool that allows you to make personal, tailored, communication with your customers on a large (and cheap) scale.
While the tools are evolving rapidly, email marketing practices must evolve at the same pace to keep up. Look at email as something more than the shotgun-blast product pitch. Learn all the functions available to you from your ESP or email deployment engine, and see how you can use them in creative ways.
With a well-developed email program, everybody wins. The customer receives targeted, compelling offers. The marketer minimizes list churn, maximizes delivery and grows ROI.
If you do not use an email service provider, now is the time to start looking, even if you have a well-developed in-house program. Your ESP will help you stay on top of all the latest developments.
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