Differences between email vendors bigger than expected

European Email Vendor Features and Functions Guide Released

06 APRIL 2011
Summary
This week the European Email Vendor Features and Functions Guide is released. The second part of the two part guide that offers side-by-side comparison of in total 53 ESPs (email service providers) worldwide. Differences between email vendors are bigger than expected.

European Email Vendor Features and Functions Guide Released

This week the European Email Vendor Features and Functions Guide is released. The second part of the two part guide that offers side-by-side comparison of in total 53 ESPs (email service providers) worldwide.

The first worldwide edition
In a collaboration of Red Pill Email and Emailmonday, this will be the first time there will be a world edition. Listing the features and functions of 53 email vendors from both North America and Europe. By adding the European vendors the number of included ESPs is effectively doubled, presenting a more complete overview of the international ESP marketplace.

Jordie van Rijn: “We see a lot of ESP’s expanding their services abroad. Sometimes with very aggressive methods and competitive pricing to get a bigger piece of the e-mail market. We are seeing that American suppliers look at Europe for innovation and clients, and vice versa. The US version has been running for two years, now the European vendors are also included.”

Differences between European Email Service Providers
While all ESPs find a solid email marketing strategy an essential requirement for email success, 20% of the email vendors don’t offer any email strategy advice. A quarter doesn’t offer creative services.

Large differences are also to be found in the emailtools themselves. If you would like to have more control of your data than just a simple export mechanism, it is advisable to look at all the different ESP offerings. From the questions we asked European ESPs about data control, there where suppliers that offered between 20% and 89% of all functionalities, quite a difference!

A new trend is offering pre-configured campaigns, like an abandoned cart campaign, a welcome mail and automatic resends to non-openers. With this type of e-mailings a lot of additional conversion and efficiency can be achieved. But only 2 out of the 28 European Email vendors offered all types of pre-configured campaigns. The majority offers less than 40% and a few don’t offer any of these campaigns.

Contents of the guide
The 2011 Email Vendor Features & Functions Guides show side-by-side comparisons of 53 email vendors ranging from small market table vendors to commercial MTAs and points in between, with over 200 essential questions asked. For the first time, a desktop application was added that helps users to identify the vendors best suited to their needs based on their own business criteria.


Further contents of the guide
The Email Vendor Features and Functions Guide presents comparison tables and graphs, in 8 different categories that look at the features and functions. It explores virtually all functional areas of interest to email marketers and end users. Over 1000 hours went into the making of this Guide; written from the perspective of an experienced hands-on email marketer.


About Red Pill email
John Caldwell, the author of the guide has been in the email space since 1996. The Red Pill Email founder, has worked on the agency side, the client side, and as a consultant, using deployment tools that range from ESPs to in-house to home-grown email systems.

About Emailmonday
Jordie van Rijn, contributing editor of the EU Email Vendor Features and Functions guide is an independent email marketing consultant with his company Emailmonday. He has over 8 years of hands-on experience as an e-mail marketing and loyalty marketing consultant. He has worked with A-list brands like AEGON, Unilever, Roche, Heineken, and many more. He is a common blogger, speaker and coach in the field of email marketing. Jordie is also partner at Emailtestbox and runs the website Emailvendorselection.com.

Quotes
"The channel is becoming even more adult and it would seem that all ESPs can send email, but buyers should be aware of the differences between vendors. Selecting the right vendor can play a vital role in achieving emailmarketing success. " Jordie van Rijn:
"The Guide doesn’t look at the number or type of clients of the participating vendors, nor does it take into consideration the participant’s revenue or company vision. It doesn’t care about the “state of email” or the geo-social ramifications of the industry as a whole. While those things are interesting and may come into play in the user’s ultimate decision, they don’t tell the user what a vendor is capable of.”" John Caldwell