All in all this is a great document that will help email marketers understand the difference between 24 email marketing solutions.
It’s not a guide that pits ConstantContact against iContact (for example) but, rather a resource to help you understand the feature sets of 24 email marketing solutions providers that range from slightly beyond NewBee all the way up to Ninja.
What’s in it
“Participating vendors were asked 127 questions of which 105 are represented in 15 comparison tables and 6 graphs, divided between 9 different categories that look at the features, functions, and technical areas of interest to end users. Almost 600 hours went into the making of this Guide; written from the perspective of an experienced hands-on email marketer.”
What we liked
It’s an easy to read, well designed document that has useful information when it comes to assessing your next ESP.
We liked that this document was open to all ESPs to participate in. Not only did they not have to pay a fee to be included but, John did not take into account the revenue of the vendor or the revenue of their clients as do some other reports.
What we really liked
When you buy this guide you get a full 30 minutes of John’s time for a consultation to ask any questions you might have relating to the guide and the process of vendor selection. This alone is well worth the price in our opinion.
What we didn’t like
We thought that some of the charts could have better labels identifying the dataset they belonged to. We spoke to John about that and we expect this will be addressed in future updates.
Who should buy this
This may not be a document for newbees or for companies who do not have a pre-defined email marketing budget. This report is well suited for any company who is currently spending $500 or more a month on their email marketing and is considering which vendors would most likely meet their needs and help them reach their goals.
Takeaway: It’s a great quick reference of who you should be short listing when it comes time to choosing a new Email Service Provider. Whether you are doing an RFP or a simple vendor evaluation, this guide is a great place to start.
The guide is priced at $1000 US and is available for download here.
