When considering a new email marketing supplier, there are many factors to take into consideration. Nowadays, the internet makes it possible to use service providers based anywhere in the world.
Whilst this is great for obtaining the best possible deal, there are other factors to take into consideration when making your decision, a few weeks back we looked at the legal implications of doing so.
In this week’s video we are going to focus on the service related issues, and what kind of implications using an overseas supplier can have:
It’s good to talk…
There are always instances where its nice just to pick up the telephone and talk to someone knowledgable at the other end.
That could be about anything from help with the software or just to pick someone’s brain for new marketing ideas.
If you are using an overseas supplier then often talking to someone just isn’t an option.
Time delay
When you are at work, during a working day, your supplier is fast asleep in bed, this is always going to cause problems.
When you’ve got work to be done and you want to pick the brains of your email marketing supplier, it’s really frustrating if it takes 24 hours to get a response.
It’s important to have a supplier that works when you do.
Server location
If you are based in the U.K and mailing to U.K contacts – it just makes sense to be sending your marketing from U.K based servers.
Nowadays it’s getting harder and harder to reach your subscribers inboxes.
Make sure your lovingly crafted mailer doesn’t end up in the junk filter with all of the overseas based junk mail.
Meet people you are dealing with
No matter what line of work you are in, opportunities and fruitful business relationships are created by meeting people.
If you are trusting your email marketing supplier with holding all of your subscribers contact details and private information.
Isn’t it better to have the reassurance that they are in safe hands. Sometimes, it’s nice to have the peace of mind by meeting your suppliers.
Foreign data protection & privacy practices
If your email marketing supplier is in another country, data protection laws that may seem second nature to you, simply may not exist.
For example if your data is stored in America, the NSA is allowed to review your data. In fact, last month Microsoft announced that they are suing the US government over regular requests to view users personal email accounts.
Also gagging Microsoft by preventing them from letting their customers know that their accounts have been accessed by the 3rd party.
Summary
When looking at a new email marketing supplier, it’s important to consider all of these things.
Sometimes it’s really easy to overlook these, they can all easily become a major issue later on down the track.
