When your business goals drive you to launch a campaign of mass mailings and e-mail marketing, Outlook 2013’s built-in tools are a good enough place to start, but you may want to consider using one of the fine professional services that specialize in e-mail marketing.
In addition to making your campaigns look more businesslike, a professional service can help you grow your mailing list. Many of the best-known e-mail marketing services can import your contacts from Microsoft Outlook.
Also, your e-mail service provider might cut you off when you try to send too many e-mail messages from Outlook at one time. Many of them do that to reduce the amount of spam e-mail that goes out from their service. Their purpose is laudable, but they might be preventing you from e-mailing important information to legitimate customers.
You may be able to find the limit on the ISP’s website or on your bill, but most make it difficult to find. Try contacting them to ask.
A professional e-mail marketing service can also make your whole marketing program more effective with features such as:
E-mail list cleanup to remove people who opt out, and so on
Statistics on the success of each campaign
A/B testing of different versions of e-mail copy to see which is more effective
Delivery assurance options to make sure your messages don’t get blocked as spam
Technical support
Each service has particular strengths that may or may not suit your specific needs. There’s no doubt, though, that for many businesses, e-mail marketing is the most cost-effective way to improve your business and make long-term relationships with your customers. Some well-known names in the e-mail marketing business include the following:
You can find even more by going to Google and searching for the phrase hosted e-mail marketing.
