Training providers who have experienced the frustration of putting a marketing email together in Outlook (perhaps you were sending a ‘thank-you’ note to delegates, or a Power Point presentation to a group of managers you had trained), know how much time you can waste sending it and the trouble gauging responses. 

You can send out a mass blast from Outlook but there are significant drawbacks that will cost your business time and money and not provide you with the best ROI from your email database. 

Too often, an email campaign is seen a quick way to get a message out to a large number of people without actually considering what the effects will be.

Because there are now over a billion spam emails sent everyday, ISPs and email providers have significantly tightened up their requirements for allowing your email campaigns to get delivered into the inbox. 

So, to ensure you don’t fall foul the best option is to utilise the services of a dedicated email marketing software provider. This software is specially created to send out mass marketing emails to your database and will be running off servers that have the capability to send out significantly more emails per hour then standard business servers. 

This means that more of your emails get delivered when you want them to be delivered. There is also something called your email sender reputation and because a dedicated software provider will have built up a good sender reputation, they are in a much stronger position to get your emails delivered to the inbox. 

Another great benefit to sending your emails from dedicated software is that you can track the results of your campaigns. This means who opened them, what links they clicked and when. With this information you can follow up in an appropriate manner even if they didn’t buy your product or service right away. 

For example, if you have a new event or programme you’re keen to get filled, you may have a link more details or even to download a brochure. 

With outlook if any of these links are clicked but the person doesn’t fill out the required form then you won’t know who they are. With specialist email marketing software you get a list of all these people which means you can pass this information onto the sales team to call up the person to ask if they would like to receive the information. 

Obviously there are additional costs involved when selecting an email marketing software supplier however, two good questions to ask are how many extra products or services would you need to sell to make it valuable and how much time and effort would you save from implementing the software.

In most instances, a good quality email marketing software solution will save you time and money and increase profitability which has to be a good thing, right?

Dave Evans

accessplanit - Training Management Software