Savvy marketers know the value of email marketing in terms of customer retention, brand loyalty and repeat sales. Sending a mass email to a customer list takes only a fraction of the time and costs much less than sending traditional direct-mail pieces. Trying to go it alone can be difficult. A good email marketing company develops relationships with the big Internet providers to ensure a high rate of email deliverability, provides reports and statistics on email marketing campaigns, manages and scrubs email lists to keep them up to date and ensures that campaigns comply with federal laws.
VerticalResponse
VerticalResponse offers a self-service email marketing platform as well as online surveys and direct-mail postcards. The company opened its doors in 2001, realizing quick success. In 2008, Vertica Response became involved with the Democratic National Convention as its official email subscription provider. In 2009, its customer list of over 75,000 realized an 82 percent retention rate, with customers like Constellation Brands, Law.com and Spendora leading the way.
VerticalResponse's key core competency is its customer service and proactive education. In addition to live support, it offers customers a series of marketing guides, podcasts, videos, tutorials, case studies and white papers to help them get their marketing campaigns off the ground. The email and reporting interfaces are powerful, but are not the easiest to use compared to some competitors' system.
ExactTarget
Founded in 2000, ExactTarget slowly made a name for itself, realizing over $5 million in annual revenues within the first 10 years. It has a stable of loyal, reputable customers like CareerBuilder, USA Today, Home Depot and Papa Johns, and a customer retention rate estimated at 93 percent. The scalability of its products, from stand-alone to enterprise applications, makes it appealing to both small and large businesses.
ExactTarget integrates its statistics and data in common customer-relationship management applications like Salesforce.com, Google Analytics and Omniture, for a smoother work flow. In addition to email marketing, the company also offers messaging channels through text and voice messaging, social marketing platforms and websites.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact's email marketing application is more robust than many of its competitors. A large part of its client list includes individuals, small businesses and nonprofits that find Constant Contact's intuitive interface simple to use. The company offers several educational resources and knowledgeable customer support.
Flexible price programs make Constant Contact affordable for most small businesses. However, although its email marketing application contains tracking statistics, its analytical capabilities fall far short of its competitors.
StreamSend
StreamSend's business proposition includes the ability to offer each customers its own dedicated IP address for email marketing purposes. This makes StreamSend's email product more reliable and gives its customers, including Monster.com, Law.com and Art.com, a high rate of deliverability.
Founded in 1998 as EZ Publishing, the company's core products were website design and hosting. StreamSend's email marketing application was developed shortly thereafter in response to customer demand, and it has now grown to be the company's flagship product.