A number of email marketing systems was assessed and compared using a number of different criteria. Please find below our findings.
We categorise email marketing systems into 3 types:-
(i) Downloaded – whereby the software/system is downloaded onto the users’ server and then subsequently installed
(ii) Application Service Provider (ASP) – whereby users will go through the traditional sales cycle before they can use the service entailing first dialoging with sales personnel, seeing a demo, receiving a consideration, signing up and then getting to use the service. This model started pre 2000 and usually involves traditional means of payment, paper contracts, sales personnel visiting your office showing you a demo, etc.
(iii) Software as a Service (SaaS) – whereby user can register an account, try for free, render the email marketing services, pay online (if necessary) and be completely self-sufficient without having to interact with any human being
(i) Downloaded
Any email marketing system that comes as a downloadable software should almost be excluded because these are the same platforms that are used by spammers to spam the world. Most of these will experience very low delivery rates unless they are being used for very small email lists because invariably all emails would be sent using a single IP address.
(ii) ASP
The ASP email marketing systems are generally 4-5 times more expensive than SaaS platforms as these providers need to hire sales person who have to manually setup accounts and each sales person will need to paid a sales commission too. We also found that many of these try to sign clients up for one-year contracts. All of these costs will be passed on to the end customer with no discernible benefits; also the sign-up process is much slower and you will have to endure time-zone related delays, language barriers, etc.
(iii) SaaS
SaaS is the way of the future, you can sign up 24-hours a day, test-drive for free, pay only for what you use and you are not tied to any contract (for most of these SaaS systems). You should be able to use these systems in any language you like.
- Features
- Email Delivery Rate
- Interface User Friendliness
- Availability of Templates
- Ease of creating EDMs
- Post Campaign Reporting
- Multi-lingual Support
- Pricing
TOP 10 Email Marketing Systems