Emails are still one of the most powerful communication channels available. However, because many companies don’t use emails properly, many users are not the biggest fans of this form of communication. What’s more, spam messages, poorly planned campaigns, and random emails cause increasingly more email clients to introduce various restrictions, blacklists, and blocks.
And that’s not all. Additionally, legislative regulations are also imposing many restrictions on companies that leverage email marketing. So how to make sure that all of the resources and energy you invest in creating emails (transactional, operational, and marketing communication) bring results and that your messages are delivered to the intended recipients? The answer is an email delivery service (EDS).
This article discusses the benefits of using an email delivery service and gives you tips on choosing the right solution for you. But before we get into details, let’s briefly define an email delivery service itself.
What is an email delivery service?
An email delivery service provides companies with the ability to send high-volume emails in a fast and reliable way. The service includes providing infrastructure, handling technical aspects of the job, and ensures support along every step of the process. Companies using email delivery services automate most of their operations related to sending transactional, operational, or marketing emails by moving them to the provider’s side. Paradoxically, this results in getting more detailed analytical insights and having greater control over the email messages that are being sent.
Using an email delivery service shouldn’t be treated as an expense because leveraging such a solution not only saves but actually makes you money. With an EDS, you can send more emails than without one and thus reach your customers and potential clients faster and more conveniently. This is probably the most important benefit of email delivery services, but undoubtedly not the only one.
Now it’s time to have a look at the main advantages of using email delivery services in more detail, starting with one of the most vital benefits – deliverability.
Benefits of an email delivery service
Deliverability
In short, email deliverability means that a message successfully lands in the recipient’s inbox, ideally in the main folder. If the email is not delivered or lands in the SPAM folder, this means that you have failed at delivering the message.
There are many aspects that influence email deliverability. The most common ones include email quality, consistency, inadequate formats, domain reputation, and using the wrong recipient email address. If you use an email delivery service, you won’t have to deal with any of these issues.
The service provider will handle authenticating your IPs, monitoring deny lists, setting up protocols like DKIM, SPF and DMARC, plus much more. And you will benefit from sending highly deliverable messages.
Email volume
If you only have to send 10 or 20 emails, you can do so without any outside help or even do it manually. But if you need to send large volume emails, including automated transactional one, you won’t do it without an email delivery service. Popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook will stop you with their limitations on the number of recipients and emails sent at the same time. On the other hand, email delivery service providers don’t impose such limitations and provide the infrastructure to send high volume emails without hurting deliverability or domain reputation.
Security
Both your information and that of those who receive emails from you will be protected at all times. Reliable email delivery service providers offer multiple features that ensure high security. The first one can include using separate sending accounts. What does that entail? You simply use one account for your marketing campaigns and another to send transactional emails.
To ensure even higher security, it’s advisable to use separate accounts for different marketing purposes. Using dedicated emails for marketing automation or newsletters also helps you gain the trust of your recipients and make the communication feel more personalized.
Offering multiple API keys is another way for email delivery service providers to offer better security. It enables you to assign a dedicated API key to each application that sends email through one account. Then, if an API key of one application gets compromised, it can be replaced with a new one without imposing a security risk on other applications.
Prevention from being blacklisted
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, email clients keep tightening their requirements in an attempt to protect their users from receiving spam emails. Unfortunately, that means it is getting more common to be labelled as a spammer, and regular email clients aren’t helping companies avoid that issue. This is a huge problem, because once you get blacklisted then all major ISPs will block your domain from sending emails.
Using an email delivery service will help ensure that you won’t face any such problems, even when sending emails in bulk. Providers of these services are recognized by ISPs as reliable senders and can send thousands of emails without risking being identified as spammers.
Support
If you use an email delivery service provider then you gain another advantage, which is that you always have someone to turn to in case of any technical issues. In addition, you won’t have to deal with a low domain reputation or the threat of being blacklisted on your own. Instead, a team of experienced professionals will have your back and will share their advice and support.
Campaign and list management
Many email delivery service providers also enable you to manage email campaigns by segmenting your data into marketing lists. And this is just one of the options of list management. You can also subscribe or unsubscribe recipients from your lists automatically using forms or dedicated links.
Email tracking
Running any marketing campaign without tracking and analyzing its performance is a recipe for disaster, wasted money, and poor results. That’s why when choosing an email delivery service, make sure it tracks every single email that you send and lets you monitor the performance and timeline of each message and whole campaigns. Tracking history should be available for at least 60 days after an email was sent.
Don’t check just generic numbers, but try to dive deeper into email tracking data – look at the engagement to see which messages most caught recipients’ attention and whether they were willing to forward them, open them multiple times, or click on the content within.
Advanced statistics
Popular email clients don’t provide you with any statistics apart from a list of sent emails. A proper email delivery service provider will be a source of detailed info and crucial data about your campaigns. This will help you spot issues and solve problems before they turn into serious challenges. Statistics that you could check include, among others, the number of emails sent, delivered, opened, clicked on, opened multiple times, the number of unsubscribes, and the bounce rate.
Compliance with legislative matters
We have already touched upon the topic of legislative regulations. Every company dealing with customer data must meet many different legal requirements and stay within compliance boundaries. If you send emails using a reliable email delivery service, you can be sure that you comply with the regulations and your communication is in line with, for example, the strict EU General Data Protection Regulation.
Lower costs
You have to remember that hiring an email delivery service also means considerable savings on your end. You don’t need to worry about the costs of purchasing, maintaining, or updating both the hardware and software used for email campaigns. It also eliminates the cost of employees who will have to do the work of an email delivery service provider. The costs of any additional technical support or expert consultation are also removed from your bill.
How to identify the most efficient email delivery service?
1. The company must have a solid track record and enough experience to ensure that it knows what challenges you are facing and how to deal with them efficiently.
2. It has its own resources, both human and technical. Make sure that it is not an improvised company or so small that it must outsource basic services such as technical assistance equipment. Always look for a provider that has received some kind of recognition to guarantee that its customer service and technical support staff are the best.
3. The company’s extensive experience and trained staff must allow them to offer the most comprehensive email delivery services available. This point is crucial, and to know if you are considering the most efficient email provider on the market, we suggest browsing their site and checking what other services they offer, what added value you can take advantage of, and the quality of both these aspects.
Wrap-up
As you can see, email delivery services bring many benefits to companies that use them. However, suppose you don’t employ email experts and can’t afford the time or financial costs generated by the maintenance of hardware and software used for email marketing activities. In that case, there’s not much to think about. So instead of worrying about your deliverability rate, being blacklisted, or not complying with legislative rules, just invest in a monthly subscription to an email delivery service and focus on other aspects of your business.