It’s time to ditch your Email Service Provider. Here’s why.

Email Service Provider diagram
James T Fletcher
CEO, Principal Consultant

11/6/2020

Whilst some marketers are talking about chatbots, AI and data driven analytics there are some who are unable to play catch up because of the limitations of their Email Service Provider. 

Email Service Providers (ESPs) are a great place to start for marketers who are just getting into the world of email marketing, allowing them to send out mass mailers that promote specific marketing messages to big audiences. Some ESPs even allow for some very basic automation based on actions taken by the recipient, but that’s where the capabilities of an ESP end. Marketers are always looking for ways to create more meaningful experiences for their customers and provide better leads to Sales but struggle with doing so because of the limitations of the technology they’re using. 

5 major obstacles for your automated progress

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1. Siloed data

Your data is stuck in the different platforms you’re using and cannot be integrated natively into your ESP. Therefore you spend a tonne of time lifting and shifting data!

2. Inability to determine lead readiness or quality

You have disparate views of the lead across platforms making it difficult to predict if leads really are Sales ready or not. Not to mention the fun around GDPR compliance for opt outs.

Website Personalization Software - Marketo

3. Limitations in executing and scaling personalised messaging across the customer journey

Personalising at account or person level is difficult because of siloed data and technology limitations.

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4. Proven data security 

Depending on the nature of your business, the data within your systems may be extremely sensitive and your ESP cannot guarantee adequate levels of encryption, security and IP lockdown to integrate with other platforms in use such as your CRM.

5. Inability to effectively measure and analyse campaigns

You are limited to high level metrics on email performance which don’t give enough insight to be able to understand, prove or optimise marketing impact.

If you’re feeling very identified by any of these points, keep reading! We can help you build a business case and implement the right Marketing Automation Platform for your business to help you level up. Get in touch with us to start your digital transformation. 

The grass really is greener on the other side

If you can relate to any of the above mentioned obstacles, it’s time to move on from your ESP and onto a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP), a much more comprehensive solution that allows you to move beyond mass mailers and point in time communication to continuous engagement and measurement. 

MAPs are powerful tools that will help you to accelerate your marketing performance by addressing all of the obstacles that are impeding your progress. 

Say goodbye to siloed data. 

Native and custom API integrations allow you to integrate your other systems into your MAP to sync data to and from each of the systems giving you an integrated customer or lead profile. 

Orchestrate cross-channel journeys.

Integrated systems means you can create a seamless customer journey across different channels and track where people are in that journey. This visibility allows you to create complete customer views and better determine lead readiness, ultimately, sending better leads to Sales. 

Improve customer experience without spending all your resources doing it.

Creating personalised messaging is simply not scalable if you have to do it one by one. With access to behavioural and demographic information across multiple channels, you can better identify your target audiences, create content tailored just for them and ensure that you are communicating with them at the right time. MAPs also offer the ability to use artificial intelligence to create personalised content based on behavioural data collected over time. 

Thinking about moving to Marketo Engage? We can help. 

Adobe Marketo Engage Partner

Spend less time worrying about data security and compliance.

We are living in a time where data is everything and more data is being collected than ever before. While this is highly beneficial from a marketing perspective, as you know, we are also facing stricter regulations in compliance and privacy. MAPs offer an overarching higher level of security with add-ons for industries such as FinServ that work with highly sensitive data on a day to day basis. Examples of some of its security features include Single Sign On, IP restrictions, data encryption, user access and permissions restrictions and subscription centres for GDPR compliance. 

Move from being reactive to proactive.

With the ability to dig deeper than high level metrics such as email performance and utilise functionality such as A/B testing on email and landing pages, you can use the insights gained from your marketing activities to become a proactive marketer. 

On average 51% of companies are currently using Marketing automation.
Source: “The Ultimate Marketing Automation Stats 2019

Don’t get left behind

If you’re interested in saying goodbye to your ESP and levelling up to a MAP, get in touch and we can help you talk out the pain points you’re experiencing and see where a MAP fits into your MarTech stack. 

Though MAPs may have a scary ticket price, it’s important to remember investing in one is ultimately cost saving once you consider that amount of internal and external resources it would require to do the same job.