What’s the BEST Email Marketing Service?

Email marketing continues to be the mainstay of most online marketing programs. It's easy, fast, and inexpensive to send out an email to your customers and the metrics on open and click through rates make the tactic very quantifiable. So what's the best email marketing tool out there?

Drumroll...and unfortunately the answer is the ever vague "it depends". I really do encourage everyone to do a careful analysis of the many email marketing tools available to determine what service is best for your specific organization. Competition among email marketing services is fierce not only on price, but also on features and functionality. Your decision should not be based on price alone. I recommend doing a weighted scorecard analysis before making a decision. A weighted scorecard takes some of the emotional factor out of choosing an application and helps you focus on the issues that really matter the most to you and your company. Here's how to do it:

First, make a list of the issues and features that are important to you in an email marketing tool. While price is one issue; other issues could include: ease of use; ability to personalize emails; list management capabilities; reporting capability; creative options; social media integration; support/training; and more. Try to keep your list to 7-10 things that really matter to you. Once you've got that, step two is to assign a percentage weight to each of these issues. The total should equal 100%. This will help you focus on the features that are really the most important to your organization. So for one retailer, price may be very important and have a percentage weight of 50%. For another, price is important but maybe only 20% of the picture.

Now you are ready to score your short list of potential email marketing services. As you review each marketing service within each of the categories, give it a score of 1-4. Then, multiply each score by the weight you've given to that feature to get your weighted score. Once you've scored each service in each of the categories, add up the totals. The service with the highest total score is the one that best meets your stated criteria!

Following is an example of a scorecard for a fictitious "ABC Email Marketing Service":

As your email list grows, and you become more comfortable with email marketing, you want to be sure you have a service that gives you the most flexibility to customize campaigns and take advantage of the latest features. While there are hundreds of email marketing services to choose from, keep in mind that there are generally three tiers of providers. The first tier is designed for small businesses and generally offer free or low-cost pricing. Examples of these providers are Constant Contact, Mail Chimp and iContact. The middle-tier providers offer more functionality including more robust segmentation, personalization and automated email campaigns. Examples of these providers include Bronto, ExactTarget and Lyris. One service unique to our industry is SnapRetail which, among its features are a library of home accent and gift manufacturer images, as well as email templates designed specifically for retailers. At the top tier, you will find email marketing services such as Silverpop, BlueHornet and CheetahMail. These providers offer very robust customization and analysis, but you'll need to be doing a significant amount of email marketing to even qualify for their service.

What features and functionality are important to you in doing email marketing, and which email marketing service do you like the best?