Do Business Well

Should your company build its own email marketing programs from scratch? Should you buy and install software products and hire and train your own email marketing staff? The answers may not be obvious. With the advent of a host of new Internet business models the real issue is whether or not you should outsource the entire operation to an email marketing service provider.

Traditional offline wisdom says that outsourcing happens late in an industry’s life cycle. But online, it’s just the opposite. Thanks to the Internet, there are a number of new models of technology and service outsourcing that can save your company time, resources, and money. Outsourcing critical business functions that are not part of your company’s core competence has become the accepted way to rapidly expand your infrastructure and gain access to best-of-breed technology and service. To get too much into the details of how, what, and why companies are outsourcing. Suffice it to say that the pervasiveness of the Internet and the resulting connectivity and easy access to computing resources is having a huge impact on the types of new services that can be out- sourced. Outsourcing has very rapidly become a norm.

Some organizations are concerned that outsourcing will cause them to lose control. This is especially common in companies where IT has traditionally been responsible for supporting marketing’s information needs as well as for implementing and operating the entire customer database. It’s not entirely clear, though, why these companies are afraid of losing control. Sometimes they’re worried about data security and the risks of hosting sensitive data on servers that are not controlled internally. Other times they’re concerned they won’t be able to add custom functionality or feature to a program.

Clearly, relying on an outside service provider will involve some risk. The service provider may lose important data because of poor backup procedures or substandard hardware and software. It may violate your customers’ privacy rights by improperly sharing access to personal data. It may not be able to grow fast enough for your needs, making performance less than optimal. If you’re considering outsourcing solutions be sure that prospective providers address your control issues so that everyone in your organization is comfortable with the decision to outsource.

All this goes to underscore just how important it is to carefully evaluate any potential service provider through due-diligence and reference checks. Leading outsourcers have probably encountered issues like the ones you are concerned about in the past, and they have undoubtedly developed appropriate responses to typical client concerns.

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