Do I need to use an Email Service Provider?

Most companies employ email marketing in one way or another, and many choose to use an Email Service Provider to send out their emails.  But why do they choose to go this route instead of just sending them themselves?

This is a common question asked by companies interested in starting out with an email marketing campaign.  The simplest approach is definitely to use a service provider.  We’ll go into the why below….

There are really two main reasons (plus many more, but two main) to use a service provider to send your mail.

1.  The interface is already built to allow you to select lists of people and send thousands of emails at once.

Email Service Providers generally have a set of templates you can select from.  After you have selected your template you edit the content of the message, and select your list of recipients (after importing/entering them) and then scheduling the delivery of your message.  This allows you to send an email with very little setup time, and without having to talk to your “tech guy” to set this all up.

2.  It helps protect your company’s IP address from being associated with SPAM which could cause servers to identify your emails as SPAM.

This is by far the greatest reason to use an email service provider.  The reputation of you IP address is something that is very important to protect.  There are lists published of IP’s known to send SPAM, and these lists are used by some servers in order to identify SPAM in the messages it receives.  Therefore, if you’re IP has a bad rating, your messages are much more likely to end up in the recipients Junk Mail.  Knowing how often some people check their Junk Mail, and how difficult it is just to get people to read emails, it is definitely not worth it to take chances in this area.

Simply put, unless you have someone who really knows what they’re doing, and someone who can set this all up so that it won’t harm your reputation on the internet, it is by far much easier to use an Email Service Provider and save yourself the headache.