8 Things to Look for When Choosing the Best Bulk Email Service Provider
Maybe you’re looking to integrate a marketing or transactional email system into your existing web application, or maybe you’re a system administrator setting up an email infrastructure for your company – no matter the case, building a bulk email framework can be…complicated. And choosing the best bulk email service to help you can be even harder.
The responsibility of running your own email platform, or the email platform for many businesses is no walk in the park. Daily tasks like managing your own servers, staying on top of your deliverability and IP reputation, troubleshooting system errors and limitations and so on can be very exhausting. And when a problem does occur, the expenses associated with system downtime can be crippling. This is why the best bulk email senders will send through an email service provider who cover all of these responsibilities for you from top to bottom. We are going to review some of the most important things to look for, when choosing the best bulk email service provider for you.
Types of Email Service Providers
When looking for the right email service provider, you must first consider the type of email service you are looking for. For example, some email service providers are focused primarily on email marketing and don’t require any technical experience or configuration. Other providers are aimed more at technically experienced developers and administrators looking to integrate a plug-in email API in to their existing application infrastructure. There are also email service providers who sit somewhere in the middle of the two, and offer the APIs a developer may be looking for, while also providing a platform for email marketing.
No matter your needs as an email sender, the best bulk email services should offer these 8 benefits to give you the best chance of email success!
8 Things the Best Bulk Email Service Providers Offer
1. Performance Dashboard
Your success or failure as a bulk email sender can often be tied back to the individual performance of your email. This means you need the ability to track things like deliverability rates, bounces, blocks, spam and other metrics that help measure your email success. These metrics should all be readily available in an easy to use, intuitive dashboard like the one shown below.
The more information you know about your email being sent, the easier it is for you to make necessary adjustments and continuously improve your performance. Maybe your complaint rate is great but your open rate is low, the only way to know where the issue lies and how to fix it is to have all of this data available.
2. Programmatic Bulk Email Sending Through SMTP or API
Many email senders are looking for a quick and easy way to integrate a pre-built email platform in to their existing website or application. The best bulk email software will have ready-to-go email APIs and SMTP services available. These APIs allow for easy sending, tracking and parsing email integration across many different development frameworks like .NET, Java, PHP, and others. Learn more here.
3. Person to Person Support
Some of the more standardized email service providers have outsourced their support or built technology to take the place of good, old-fashioned person to person communication. For a customer with a unique email platform that demands a personal approach, talking to a robot is less than ideal. A good email service provider will offer quick, personalized support with professionals who have the experience to fix any type of customer problem.
Good support is a benefit that most customers don’t know about until they need it. Don’t wait until a problem occurs to figure out if you’ll be talking to a robot for the next three hours, look into what kind of support you’ll be getting ahead of time…you’ll be happy you did!
4. Automatic Bounce Handling
The best email service provider cares about your email deliverability. They go the extra step to make sure that you are getting the most from your email solution. At Socketlabs, we have a built in email suppression system that automatically adds hard email bounces and complaints to a personal suppression list. This means that if you accidentally send an email to an address that shouldn’t have received it, they will be added to a suppression list and no longer receive your email. This is just one of many tools that a good email service provider will have to help automatically improve your email deliverability without any effort.
5. Automatic Throttling
Continuing on the topic of deliverability, many new senders don’t know how important it is to throttle their email, most probably don’t even know what email throttling is. Simply put, new email senders must limit the amount of email they send on a new IP address, gradually increasing the volume over time. In other words, you need to throttle back on the amount of email you send on a new IP address to ensure the best deliverability. If you don’t, mailbox providers will think you are spamming, and they will start automatically filtering your mail to recipient’s spam folders or block it all together. To avoid this, SocketLabs offers automatic email throttling to allow your new IP address to warm up properly. With years of experience, we know the proper amount of email to send to avoid raising any red flags with mailbox providers.
6.Dedicated IPs for Qualified Senders
Depending on the amount of email you send, a dedicated IP address can help improve your email deliverability. If you send 100,000 emails or more per month, you will be able to successfully build your sender reputation. This means that your good sending practices will directly contribute to your success as a sender. A good email service provider will be capable of giving senders a designated IP address for sending email if it benefits them. If you are a smaller sender however, it would likely be more beneficial for you to operate on a shared IP to help build your reputation. This type of benefit will help your email system grow with your business allowing for aligned scalability.
7. Customer Vetting Process
Bad news for spammers, a good email service provider should vet all potential customers before allowing them to use their platform. The reason why relates to the previous point about a shared IP address. Let’s say the malicious email senders are allowed to use the email platform that you use. If you are a smaller sender who sends legitimate opt-in or person to person mail via a shared IP address, the poor sending practices of others could ruin your deliverability. By vetting the email senders who use the SocketLabs system, we are able to offer the best possible deliverability by supporting only legitimate senders.
8. Free Trial
Everyone likes free, right? The best bulk email services will give you the opportunity to send bulk email for free. With SocketLabs, the free option is more than just a trial, it’s an actual plan. This gives new customers the ability to see what our platform offers and decide whether or not it’s a good fit for them. If a customer is content with our free plan, they can continue to use it as long as they would like!
Making the Best Decision for your Email Success
As an email sender looking for the best bulk email service, it’s important to find the right fit for you. While they might all look similar, different email service providers will all have different specialties and qualifications. At SocketLabs we offer all of the listed benefits of a good email service provider and much more. Customers love our easy integration and personalized support from small issues to complete system customization for bigger customers. SocketLabs has the unique ability to cover a wide range of customer needs no matter how complex.
While we are always looking to acquire new customers, we also focus heavily on the customers we have to make sure they are provided with everything they need to succeed, no matter the size. To sign up for free and feel the SocketLabs difference, visit our plans and pricing page.
