Email Marketing First Time Buyers Guide

Email Marketing First Time Buyers Guide
There can be a bewildering range of types of email marketing solutions each with a number of different feature sets.
This guide aims to summarise the pros & cons of each type of solution and what to look for.
Contents
1. Key Features to look for in your first email marketing solution
2. Inhouse software
3. Hosted ASP solutions
4. Bureau / Managed Services
5. The Maxemail Family of Email Marketing Solutions

Key Features to look for in your first email marketing solution
Key functionality that any solution and supplier should offer should includes:
1) UK support via telephone & email
If the support is based abroad you may have to wait several hours for a response. By the time the response has arrived you have gone home and it will be a couple of days till the issue is resolved.
2) Multiple users supported
This is essential if you want multiple members of your marketing department to access the solution.
3) Approval process
If the solution has no approval workflow then it will only be a matter of time before your campaign is delivered incorrectly.
4) Test & Seed list functionality
The ability to test your email to a single or set of seed addresses will save you time and ensure there are no issues with your campaign.
5) Multiple lists
You will require more than a single list if you are going to be sending more than a single newsletter. Check to see if the solution offers this capability.
6) Deduplication of email addresses
This should be automatic and prevent you from bombarding customers with multiple copies of your email.
7) Store data other than email addresses
You will want to store information such as names, purchase history, content preferences and more to use when personalizing and segmenting your campaigns.
8) Appending data
As you collect more data offline you will want to add it to your lists. There should be an option in the solution to add this information to the solution without having to create a new list.
9) Unsubscribe management
This should entail the ability to add a link to your email that takes your recipient to a confirmation page stating they have unsubscribed. This should also flag the record in the solution to  automatically ensure they are not sent to again. Advanced solutions give you two types of unsubscribe