Why Using Email Service Provider Helps In Email Marketing

By Author: Camimi Morales
Total Articles: 18
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Introduction
Everyone can send out newsletters. However, serious email marketers should use an Email Service Provider (ESP). Email service providers are technology companies that help in email marketing services, store email addresses and send out much larger quantities of email. As email marketing is still ranked as the most effective marketing channel in businesses, beating out social media, SEO, and affiliate marketing, more ESPs have sprung up to offer some advanced features and provide differentiated services that help marketers target and automate email better.

Lots of professionals associate ESP with simple email services such as Gmail / Outlook/ AOL / Yahoo. In fact, they are not what email marketers would refer to as an ESP because they do not allow sending in bulk to subscribers. There are many well-known ESPs out there such as MailChimp, AWeber, SendGrid, SparkPost, ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor, Hubspot and etc.

For sure, there will be an ESP that will match everyone's budget and feature requirements. At MailboxValidator, we believe that ESPs bring many advantages vs. just sending out emails ...
... blindly. Furthermore, what can it do for your business or organization

What are the benefits of using an Email Service Provider?
By using an ESP, email marketers can track important statistics such as open, click and bounce rates. These provides vital clues to how well an marketing campaign is going. A low open or click rate indicates that your marketing contents are not interesting. It could also mean that your email content is not properly formatted, making it tough to read. Meanwhile, a high bounce rate is a big warning that your emails are being blocked or your mailing list is stale.

ESPs have the experience to properly configure your mail server. With DKIM, SPF and DMARC configured, you will see a lower bounce rate as ISPs won't automatically reject your mails.

Another benefit is that ESPs can keep track of unsubscribed readers so you don't need to manually do so. Unsubscribed readers are automatically excluded from any email campaigns. Some ESPs will also unsubscribe a reader if a hard bounce is detected from that email address. On top of that, they may also provide the maintenance and management of subscriner lists for opt-in users, as well as the sending of emails to those lists. Pretty handy and super important to prevent your emails from being flagged as spam.

It is common for people to read their emails from mobile devices or tablets, in addition to computers. This means your content must be responsive to adjust for the various device display sizes. ESPs tend to provide such email templates for your email campaign. Besides that, email marketers also can use the ready-made templates on different themes for their email campaign. In short, you can send beautiful emails if you use the right ESP.

Not sure if your content is spam-like? Your ESP may have a spammy content checker. If they do, use it to screen your email content before sending out your campaign.

Last but not least, ESPs provide multiple ways to send out your emails. The usual options include API, SMTP server or sending via their web dashboard.

Downsides of using an Email Service Provider
As with all things, there are downsides to using an ESP. Number one is that ESPs are not free. You need to subscribe to a plan to use their services. Fortunately, the cost of subscription shouldn't be that high.

But take note that if your mailing campaigns incur too many bounces or if you send emails to honeypots, your account may get banned. This is the biggest downside that every ESP user should be aware of.

Having a subscription with an Email Service Provider doesn't mean you can send out tons of emails. ESPs like to impose hard limits on the number of emails you can send per month. This usually affects new ESP users. Users have to prove themselves worthy by building their email reputation score over months. Then maybe the ESP will grant a higher volume of email sending.

Conclusion
As we've laid out above, using an Email Service Provider comes with a multitude of benefits despite the downsides. With an ESP, two main goals can be achieved; the first being able to track the open, click and bounce rates; the 2nd is the reduction in bounce rate.

The biggest downside of being banned by the ESP can be mitigated with the help of MailboxValidator Email Validation Services at https://www.mailboxvalidator.com/#123articleonline. Always validate your email list with MailboxValidator to reduce bad emails which also reduces your sending costs. This ensures that you won't send out emails to unreachable email addresses, thus reducing your chances of being marked as a spammer.