We have a client that challenged us to find an email deployment vendor that would allow for the automatic reporting of deliverability statistics for their email-to-web campaigns on a very granular level. The client needs to know what every recipient of every email blast does when they receive their email offers. Do they open the email, click-through a particular link on the email, view particular offers, or even opt-out of future emails? Did the email bounce, get returned, or hit an “out of office” auto-reply? Now just about all 3rd party email vendors support downloadable statistics in comma seperated or tab delimited values for these metrics…but we need one that offers an API (Application Programming Interface) that would allow for automated transmission of the statistics to the clients web-service and ultimately into their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) database. Not so easy to find…so I find.
You see, our client needs to append their database with the results of each email campaign. They absolutely need to know whether a particular name in their database opts-out, so they can be removed. They need to know whether the email addresses that they have on file are actually current, active addresses. If the email bounced, they need to make provisions to remove that email from their DB. And strategically, they would like to know what the recipient clicked on (have an interest in) so it can be categorized and used for more direct marketing to that name later. The reason that it needs to be automated is due to the shear size of their list. If you consider how long it would take a human being to make all those changes on an email campaign of 10,000 recipients…you might as well just pick up the phone and call each one personally.
We have used the over-the-counter “Constant Contacts” of the marketing world at great length in the past, and are very knowledgeable and proficient at them. However, we embarked on a mission to find a vendor that had much more robust features, including the web API’s to manage the data more efficiently. We talked to some great vendors such as EmailLabs, IntelliContact, and CheetahMail by Experian, but the prices were out of our client’s budget (and any small organization’s budget for that matter). So we are still on the hunt for the right supplier at the right price. We may have found our solution with VerticalResponse, and we are assessing its features and opportunity cost. We will keep you posted as to our findings.
If any of our readers has any input on this topic, please comment below, or contact us. We would love to learn what you know.
