How Multiple SMTP Delivery Systems can Improve Your Email Marketing
In the increasingly dynamic digital world, brands compete for their audience’s attention in every space – particularly through email marketing campaigns. So companies will have to look for new ways to improve their email marketing operations and optimize their ROI.
When considering long-term strategies many email marketers don’t consider using more than one email delivery system, but it can have many advantages!
The Case for Multiple SMTP Delivery Systems
Today it is easier to manage more than one email delivery system, thanks to email marketing platforms with built-in integration to multiple email relay or email SMTP services.
So why should you consider having multiple delivery systems at your fingertips? See how this strategy can improve email marketing performance and ROI for your company below.
Increase Profits Margins Based on Audience Value
Using multiple email delivery vendors offers the unique ability to increase profits on your most engaged and profitable audiences.
Professional marketers will typically employ some high-end ESP or SMTP vendor for their email marketing operations. Such systems also come with a higher price tag.
Savvy marketers will, for instance, add Amazon SES as an additional vendor to their delivery arsenal. It is a top tier email delivery platform, with an attractive low-cost pricing model. The only caveat is that Amazon SES has a very strict bounce rate policy.
So what savvy marketers do, is send their most engaged and often most profitable audiences, via Amazon SES. This enables them to reduce their mailing costs and increase the profit margins of these audiences.
Similarly, you might have segments that are relatively engaged but generate less value. For example, they fewer purchase less. Here too, savvy marketers increase their profit margins by sending these segments via an additional lower-costing or free SMTP server.
Divide and Rule Acquisition and Retention
Professional email marketers separate their marketing acquisition from their retention operations. In email marketing, the best practice for this is to manage each operation on a different IP.
So the ESP/SMTP system you choose should offer the ability for you to use and choose different IPs for these different operations, as you don’t want any reputation issues that may arise via acquisition to impact your retention operations and vice-versa. Often delivery systems will offer sub-accounts to manage these separate Operations.
Employing an email marketing platform that can manage both operations, by easily routing each operation via the matching sub-account IP, from the same command center, enables marketers to streamline their email marketing and reduce operational costs.
Redundancy Benefits
While having multiple delivery systems available may seem redundant, redundancy is exactly what email marketers want to have.
When one system is experiencing a temporary outage or some other operational issue, (usually this happens at the least convenient time), the ability to easily switch email delivery systems and continue your email marketing operations becomes invaluable.
Optimize Costs and Deliverability of On-Premise Systems
Some email marketers run their operation using an on-premise SMTP, that over the years they’ve integrated into their CRM and tweaked, to provide them with the good deliverability they require.
A scenario that can arise in such a setup: Despite years of integration, along with list hygiene, certain mailbox providers (let’s say for example Gmail, Yahoo, or some other), remain underperforming in terms of inbox placement. In such cases routing traffic through a top-tier ESP/SMTP vendor could help overcome such issue, so long as the marketer continues to employ the same high standards of email marketing that they do with their on-premise platform.
A New Trend in Email Marketing Platforms
The downside to having multiple email systems and constantly needing to switch between the different platforms is the inability to streamline analytics, and thus gain a clear understanding of the effectiveness of a campaign across the multiple systems used.
Perhaps that’s why a new trend in email marketing has emerged where the front-end functionalities, such as list, campaigns, segmentation, and analytics are separated from the back-end SMTP delivery system. This gives email marketers the power to control all the information they want from as many systems as they choose from one marketing command-center.
The benefit of separating the front-end from the back-end is to create a solution that handles multiple email delivery systems without going through the hassle of re-integrating, losing information or simply wasting time switching back and forth. Ongage is an example of a platform that can do this.
When email marketers have the power to manage and route multiple email marketing operations via multiple email delivery systems, while getting full marketing analytics across all systems, provides marketers with a highly versatile and powerful email marketing platform. The end result being improved deliverability, performance, profit margins, and ROI.
Improving Email Marketing Campaigns without Multiple Vendors
While employing a multiple delivery system can offer all the benefits noted above, we realize that not everyone might need such a delivery strategy. Having said that, everyone needs a solution that can give them the control to easily add or switch delivery systems or sub-accounts when needed, and that’s exactly why hybrid email solutions are best for companies looking to streamline and improve their email marketing operations.
Hybrid email solutions that separate the back-end SMTP relay from the front-end, offer a best-of-breed solution with maximum versatility and Minimum hassle.
This solution is optimal for companies who have to manage multiple email delivery sub-accounts from the same vendor, and want to gain improved dashboard control and analytics understanding, as well as for companies who simply want the option to add another email vendor. Either way, a smart email marketing platform that separates the front-end from the back-end management simplifies all those tasks while ensuring full control over all components of your email marketing operation.
