ESP Email – Nothing to do with Telepathy
Digital Marketing

ESP Email – Nothing to do with Telepathy

10/19/20

When you hear ESP what is the first thing you think of? More than likely, something along the lines of Extra Sensory Perception or telepathy, right?

What about Email Service Provider?

No?

Probably not, at least not until today.

That is right, we are talking about email services!

Email Service Providers

Typically, when people think of email service providers, they imagine a company that offers email services, like Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL. While this is true, it is a very broad interpretation of the definition. When discussing an email service provider as a platform it refers to a company that assists in sending email marketing messages. A lot of these platforms allow you to create/send emails, email promotions, or newsletters without their assistance, in a self-service manner.

Smart Insights points out that:

  • Email campaigns can reach an open rate of nearly 20%, oftentimes, and have a click-through rate just above 3%.
  • Social Media comparisons only have a 1% click-through rate on average.

Further studies have shown that people, no matter the age group, prefer email marketing because it’s more permission based. What do we mean by that? Email marketing advertisements are generally sent to people who have signed up for an e-club or some sort of list. This also easily explains why email marketing ROI is dramatically better than it is with social media marketing.

Now you’re probably thinking, "I can just send emails from my regular email service, what makes these ESPs so special?"

ESPs are designed to help facilitate marketers to reach the people they want, with the right email, and most importantly, at the right time. These platforms give you all the necessary tools to help optimize your email marketing strategies:

  • Personalized email campaign designs with or without pre-made templates.
  • Organization to build and segment subscriber lists.
  • Email campaign management to review the analytics

Another important aspect of Email Marketing is staying in line with current compliances and laws. For example, mandates require all emails to include a link for recipients to “unsubscribe”.

Effective uses of ESP Marketing

Segmenting Subscriber Lists

Relevance is the key to creating a personalized experience. This ensures you are targeting and sending your emails to the right people. Your subscribers can be segmented by an endless list of features, some of which could include – age, income, location, etc.

Responsive Formatting

Emails need to be designed for different devices. Your message will be lost on someone on their cell phone if the email is set up for computers only. It’s important to make sure the formatting is correct for all possible devices. ESPs can help ensure your email appears correctly on any device your recipient uses.

A/B Testing

ESPs allow you to test the waters before diving in, so to speak.

You can create an email with two slightly different versions. You can send both versions to a small test group, at the same time, to see which version performs the best. Once the best performing one is recognized you can send that version to the rest of your audience, guaranteeing better results.

Automated Emails Based on Specific Triggers

for this use, specific triggers or behaviors activate the release of an email. This email marketing automation software helps make an impact on the subscriber because they are generally tied to a specific occurrence – a purchase, a birthday, etc.

Statistically, around 17% of email marketing campaigns go to the SPAM folder and fail to reach the intended consumers

One of the greatest and most important features of ESP targeted email marketing services includes their deliverability rate. Using an ESP keeps the deliverability of your emails at its optimal state. Why wouldn’t you want the emails you’ve worked so hard on to end up in the inboxes of the people you intended?