Choosing Your Email Marketing Vendor
Sometimes "brand name" will land you in the spam folder
by John Brogan
CEO/Founder
We subscribe to almost every major retailer email list. In fact, we subscribe to almost every major mailing list that is available for retailers, online stores, and direct marketing firms. Why? Because this is the best way to see how our competition is caring for their clients.
I was shocked when I reviewed the delivery statistics.
We found that messages sent from over 85% of the top retailers land in the junk or spam folder at least 50% of the time. Many of those messages show the reputation of their vendor is in the toilet and many are flagged by third party spam systems. Yet when we call the retailer and show them conclusive evidence their mailings are in bad shape we hear "there are no problems with our deliveries." No problems, really? Some of the retailers have been landing in the spam folder for years, yes years, and from what I can see, they will remain in the spam folder for the years to come. The belief that "our vendor is big so they would not have delivery problems" is nonsense and I encourage anyone with a mailing list to carefully review their inbox deliveries to discover the truth.
Why does landing in the spam-folder continue?
There is absolutely no excuse for any company to constantly land in the spam folder. No excuse. If your vendor is not willing to help you understand exactly what caused you to land in the spam folder, it's time to switch vendors. You need a vendor that will work WITH you, every step of the way, to make sure your messages land in the inbox.
Everyone occasionally lands in the spam folder.
Landing in the spam folder is not terrible as long as the problem is FIXED and FIXED FAST. Our rule is that you should have no more than 3 messages land in the spam folder without switching back into the inbox. Antispam systems change almost daily so it's possible you will land in the spam folder. But these major retailers I mentioned above have been landing in the spam folder consistently and in some cases for YEARS. We don't allow that to happen. If you find a message landed in the spam folder, we find the answer, and give you the solution.
Think carefully and test thoroughly.
If you are employed by a high-end retailer or are running a mailing list that has millions of subscribers, THINK before blindly trusting a vendor and locking yourself into a long term agreement. COMPARE the features the vendor offers with our features and then send some TEST mailings to a small set of recipients to see how the mail will arrive. In the end I am confident you will see that Global IntelliSystems is your best choice. We do not lock anyone into long term contracts because we believe that makes a vendor lazy if they know you are stuck with them regardless of their performance. We work hard to keep your business every day.
My final words....If you think that only the jumbo sized email marketing firms can "handle you" then you are missing a huge opportunity to work with the true very best. Whenever we hear of a prospect choosing one of the major vendors (major because they spend money on huge ads making you think they are important) we (1) sign up to their mailing list to watch their performance, and (b) check back with them 3 months after they start service. So far many keep landing in the junk folder and when we call them to follow up about their decision we hear the same story ..."we're locked in to a multi-year contract so we're stuck now." We just let them know that we will always leave the light on for them to come in and join the best in the business.
John Brogan