Are you thinking about using email marketing or are you currently running small email campaigns from your own in-house mail servers?

Companies trying to manage email marketing in-house eventually hit some stumbling blocks along the way. So at what stage is it time to outsource to an ESP and what are the main reasons for doing so?

If you are emailing more than 50 people in one go, you should really avoid using Outlook or your standard email system - your business email server is just not designed for this purpose.

Here are some of the main reasons why you should be using an ESP and why you really shouldn’t try email marketing in house.

1. Deliverability

Our technology is set up to send 1 million emails per hour and then set throttle controls so that ISPs and corporate servers are not bombarded. They know our sending IPs, they know who we are and they know our emails are from a reputable source.
 
If you are sending the emails out in-house then the ISPs receiving your email don’t have you noted as an email broadcaster and may easily mistake you for a spammer.

2. Keeping your lists clean

Managing bounces and unsubscribes in-house can easily get quite messy, not to mention being a real time-drain!
 
With ReportMail you can set automated bounce and unsubscribe rules so that offending email addresses are added to a suppression list. No manual intervention is needed and you will never need to worry about accidentally spamming someone ever again!

3. Reporting

With an ESP like ReportMail, you will know who opened your email and when, what they clicked on, if they unsubscribed or if their email bounced.
 
With this information you can build up an understanding of how your emails are performing and what type of information is of interest to your contacts.
 
You can mine this data, segment it and use it in future to optimise your campaigns. It will increase your ROI and save your budget by sending the right emails to the right people.
 
With Outlook you can only add a read receipt, which users often block.

4. Design

By sending a basic email from Outlook you’re not building or leveraging your brand, your email isn’t instantly recognisable to your audience and if you want to include an attachment or an image it can increase your chances of the email getting stuck in a spam filter.
 
By using an ESP you can send a branded, well-designed email helping your audience get the message and you can host all your images and documents on our server.
 
Email marketing isn’t expensive, there are no barriers to entry and you don’t need an in house team of designers and programmers to get going, so if you currently “spray and pray” why not make this the week you take your email communications to the next level and notice the difference in your bottom line.

5. Personalisation/dynamic content

If you are sending bulk emails from your own email client it’s likely you will be using the BCC function.

With this approach you won't be able to address anyone by name, let alone add content that is relevant to them as an individual. Your emails will have a very unpersonal tone.

ReportMail enables you to address all your contacts by name and also merge in other data you hold about them like their company name, or previous products/services they have purchased from you.

With ReportMail you can also add dynamic content to your emails based on your contacts' preferences. By adding content blocks to your email, you can press send once and every recipient will receive an email with content that is personalised to them. Increasing the content relevancy will in turn increase your open and click rates.