3 Good Reasons to Outsource Your Email Send

When a business tells us they are already using some form of email marketing to communicate with their target audience, the question we ask is: "how are you executing and managing your email campaigns?" A surprising number of times the answer is: "we just use Outlook," or "we use bulk email software, and manage it ourselves." It's not that we are against managing your email send in- house; it's just that we have found it to be better in theory than in practice.


Here are three good reasons to outsource your email send.

1. Tracking and Reporting
Without metrics like open rates and click-through, it's hard to know which parts of your email campaign are working and which could use some tweaking. Effective email marketing isn't about the send - it's about the results of the send. And that means tracking and reporting. Some in house systems do offer tracking and reporting, but many companies don't use it. They cite resource limitations ("the tech guys haven't have time to set it up"), unusable data ("we get reports, but I'm not quite sure what's what"), cost ("adding opens rate tracking would require an upgrade to our system") or some other issues and combination. But the bottom line is this: If you're serious about email marketing, if you want to optimize your return on investment, you need to have robust, reliable and timely tracking and reporting.


2. Getting Results
Asking a site visitor to take the next step is the 'call to action'. This is the "contact us", "join our mailing list", or "sign up today" option, which informs the site visitor of the correct next step. Most people are grateful to be guided through the process of evaluating a product or service, so if you tell them that the next step is to sign up for a 30-day trial, many of them will. Another benefit of outsourcing is the advice they can provide. Even if you don't pay for one-on- one consulting, they will provide education to their customers, ranging from optimizing your list growth to avoiding spam filters to elements of good email design.



3 . Managing Subscribers, Bounces and Unsubscribers
Some in-house systems handle this, but others require that you do it manually. While it may not seem like much with a small list, a larger list requires much more attention. And now, with CAN-SPAM, not only do you have to remove people who unsubscribe, you have to do so within 10 days. A good Email Marketing solution will handle these things automatically. In addition to saving you time, you'll get things your in-house system probably didn't provide - like differentiation between types of bounces, automatic removal after a certain number of bounces and immediate unsubscribe to stay ahead of CAN-SPAM.

Reputable ESPs can provide solutions to fit into any budget based on list size and/or volume. Plus, when you add up the benefits: • Increased deliverability • Enhanced tracking and reporting • Latest technology • Automated subscriber, bounces and unsubscribe • Great advice, outsourcing is a must.