Best ESP - what are you using?
Hello
I went to the awesome Litmus conference last August and could not believe the amount of people there. I brought back so much information that I have now been asked to do some research for the best ESP for our entire University.
I work for a University in Florida and we have many CMS's in place for various needs. But we do NOT have an ESP that can handle our marketing type emails; one time emails; notification emails; internal emails. Right now, I build many emails in Vertical Response and send to myself and then 'forward' using outlook to our University distribution list. But this is really growing we need a University wide solution. So, I wonder if any of you would chime in on this one. Whether you work for a corporation; design agency or educational school, I would be most interested. Here are some of our needs:
- Nice looking/easy templates for responsive design
- EASY...I won't be able to handle for vast amount of these and so some with little code will have to do their own using the 'nice' templates.
- integration with our active directory or ldap server -- I don't know if this is even possible and our IT department would have to buy in. But we have 3500+ staff/faculty and then our students...yikes. The distribution lists changes daily. Is there an ESP who could partner with us as far as the distribution list? Does anyone out there do this?
- Testing emails for spam compliance
- A/B testing
Thank you anyone, in advance for your time. But I've always found reviews from other users to be the best....Debbie
Hey Debbie, 1) and 2) build email via easy drag-n-drop builder like Stripo.email with a really great amount of pre-designed templates which is saving time.
After quick and easy fine-tuning, export to ESPs fitting your requirements like MailChimp or try esputnik.com
Stripo has top ESPs direct integrations or via HTML file which could fit your IT dept.
3) - 4) - 5) esputnik.com has a powerful tools set and open for .edu projects.
Hi Debbie, I use mailchimp and their Mandrill service to send emails. Re: #3, if your IT manages the email lists, theoretically you could just use Mandrill's SMTP to send emails. Probably not the best idea, but certainly quick and easy.
I also really like Mandrill because I think the UX is awesome. Pretty much everything in the admin is easy to find an understand.
Re: item #3, many ESPs will work with you to identify how to integrate with your active directory/ldap server. I currently use Real Magnet integrated with an association management platform. Real Magnet gave a case study at a conference where a customer of theirs managed their lists via folders in DropBox! They hit all your other items above, too.
We use Responys.
1. Stamplia has some free templates - responsive.
2. - Ease - used to use Bronto - Bronto bit easier to navigate than Responys. Either can build out templates for you if needed, will have to pay.
4&5 -Both will work to make sure within can-spam, both can AB.
Good Luck.
Hi you should check out ContactMonkey, they have a solution that has been built exactly for this!
They have an internal email tracking solution that allows you to send track and measure all your internal emails from Outlook without the need to use an external ESP. As their tool integrates with Outlook you can send mass emails to your existing distribution lists, upload your existing responsive HTML email templates and newsletters plus much more all within Outlook.
Here's some info on how the tool works https://www.contactmonkey.com/blog/how-to-send-employee-newsletter-in-outlook
I use Campaign Monitor - unsure about point 3 but you can check the other 4 boxes :)
Hey Debbie,
There are a plethora of ESPs out there these days. Many marketing professionals seem to like Forrester reports: https://www.forrester.com/The+Email+Marketing+Scorecard/fulltext/-/E-RES57013 . Personally I think it's kind of hooey, and I doubt your university would be happy to fork over $499 just to get access to the report. Nearly all ESPs should be able to provide the capabilities you mention. Some have learning curves, so something newer with a focus on user-interface design would make sense. Off the top of my head, I think customer.io, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and MyEmma might be good products to look at.
Your list is actually pretty small compared to what they're generally capable of handling (for example most of the companies I've worked for or with have distribution lists ranging from hundreds-of-thousands to tens-of-millions). If IT is going to be involved, the best bet is to look at what you want to do with your list and present it to IT for them to review available products for their ability to integrate or co-exist with their platform(s). There are pitfalls to this approach though, as some IT teams at some organizations might not understand or correctly prioritize your concerns, so communication with them would be paramount in order to achieve the best result all around. Cost is also often an issue! Note that you generally get what you pay for, with some exceptions. Some "best in class" platforms are probably ExactTarget, Responsys, and StrongView. I think they're probably more expensive and have higher learning curves, but they also integrate with a lot of other things very well and have great reporting, analytics and testing capabilities.
Good luck!
I know this post is 3 years old but I found it doing a similar search so for those others just now viewing this post: MailerLite meets all these requirements and much more (except maybe #3 natively, but you could use a connector like https://www.onelogin.com/connector/mailerlite )Free for up to 2000 contacts, no crippleware! AF link: http://www.mailerlite.com/a/wluinocy0w