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Evaluate Professional Email Marketing Services Capabilities

Does your provider or product vendor have a professional services group or does it rely on your internal IT group or outside system integration services to install its product or integrate its technology platform? The quality of professional services groups varies widely and the vendor’s own team is often not the one best suited to implement your email marketing solution. When evaluating professional services organizations, look for the following:

• An emphasis placed on professional services by the vendor (as opposed to your sudden realization that you need help implementing the vendor’s solution).
• Depth and breadth of services offered.
• Detailed domain experience that maps to the problem your are attempting to solve and products or technology you have chosen.
• Composition of service teams, including level of seniority and experience of team members.
• If considering a third-party professional services firm, evaluate its experience working with the tools and technology vendor you have chosen. (You probably don’t want to be their guinea pig.)

Evaluate Email MarketingTechnology Infrastructure and Architecture

Pay close attention to your vendor’s or service provider’s product or technology architecture. How customizable is its solution? How scalable is the technology? Who are the people responsible for technology development and what are their credentials? When evaluating the technology infrastructure and architecture of a service provider or vendor, consider the following:

• What is the design philosophy underlying the technology or product? Is the technology or product intended for your type and size of business? Is it aligned with your marketing organization’s philosophy?
• An Internet-based design center versus pre-Internet (client- server) design
• What is the history and evolution of the product? Did it ⁽⁽morph” into its current state or was it designed to be what it is from the beginning?
• Has the technology been around for a while or are you going to be on the “bleeding edge” by choosing this product?
• Does the feature-set map to your current needs and still leave room to grow?

Evaluate Email Marketing Operations and Hosting Infrastructure

If you are outsourcing the operations and hosting of your technology and data to a service provider you must carefully consider its operational infrastructure. Some service providers have built their own network operations and hosting centers, while others rely on third-party collocation services, such as Exodus Communications. When evaluating the operations and hosting infrastructure of your service provider, consider the following:

The choices made for hosting and network operations

• The quality and reputation of possible third-party service providers such as collocation services
• System monitoring and failure-detection procedures (how quickly the service provider can detect that it is experiencing operating problems)
• Redundancy and disaster-recovery procedures
• Backup procedures and processes
• Network redundancy
• Geographic coverage

Check Email Marketing Client References

No one can give you a better indication of how well the product or service you’re considering works than current and past customers or clients. Will the service or product provider offer all of its clients as references? If not, why not? Is it still doing business with all the clients on their client list? How does your company compare with the others on the list? Are you the same size? In the same business? Have the same industry focus?

Evaluate Operating Email Marketing History and Performance

Ask the prospective service provider to outline its operating history. You want them to provide you with their service up-time as well as outline their operating procedures. The Internet is a very new place and an extra year or two of operations can make a big difference. Nothing beats the experience that 24-7 operations give a service company in terms of ironing out possible software bugs and streamlining operations. When evaluating operating history and performance, consider the following:

• How long the service provider has been in business
• The number of clients it services and how fast its business has grown
• History of catastrophic failures and client data loss
• Performance history for average and worst-case network congestion

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