What Will the Vendor REALLY Do For You?

Ask your vendor the following questions. If you get even one "NO" then they should be disqualified....

(1) Will you be on the constant lookout for blocks and greylists and will you fix them for free, around the clock?

(2) Will there be less than ten (10) other dedicated delivery servers on the hardware I will be using?

(3) If I have problems delivering to a specific domain or ISP, will you handle fixing the problems, free?

(4) Do you have a list analysis tool that will help me find old confirmed-opt-in addresses and remove them?

(5) Will you help me re-confirm my mailing list to make it 100% confirmed opt-in?

If you get a "no" to any of those above questions, run, do not walk, to the nearest exit!

Experience, Experience, and more Experience

This is one of the most important areas to look at when choosing a vendor. Many email marketing vendors arrived on the scene within the past 5 years and are managed by people who used to work in non-email industries There is nothing wrong with changing jobs and starting an email marketing firm but the industry contacts, reputation, and basic understanding of low-level email transports, what recipients do with an email once received, and how to format email to fly through gateways is not learned overnight. It takes at least 10 years, maybe longer, to build the solid contacts in the industry to be considered a serious player among the top ISP administrators. With Global, members on our team have been directly involved in the industry since 1982. Top management at some of our competitors were not even born then, or were chasing ice cream trucks and riding big wheels. Experience counts in this industry.

Secure Data Storage

There is absolutely no excuse for an email vendor to lose its customer lists to third parties. No excuse. There are many competitors in this industry who, in our opinion, are focusing on the bottom line $$$ instead of customer protection. With Global, you are the most important part of the company. We have dozens of active patrol scripts monitoring the various access points to our system and we are alerted instantly to any attempt to access the system from outside parties. Plus, our monitoring systems will disable access points if it even thinks someone is trying to access the system illegally.

Real Customer Service?

Anyone can send an email message. Many people try to keep a big mailing list in their Outlook contacts file and use that list to broadcast their important mail. But when something goes wrong with delivery, there is nowhere to turn, and that causes problems if the message is critical. With Global, we have a team of dedicated staff waiting to help you with whatever question, concern, or problem may arise. If you have trouble reaching a certain ISP, we are a phone call or email away and we jump right onto the task to get you a quick resolution. If the email marketing vendor does not want to take calls, chances are they do not have (a) the experience, (b), staff, and (c) willingness to help you succeed. We care about your success so that's why you can call us or email us any time you want. We don't charge you for the phone call - we enjoy helping you.

No Charge For Dedicated Servers

Anyone in the email marketing industry knows what happens when you "share" IP space with another marketer. If that marketer has old addresses on their list then you also feel the impact due to the bad reputation of the IP that sends the messages. Just ask us when you open account for dedicated servers and we will gladly give them to you at no charge.

A Robust Infrastructure

This ties back to the experience factor we mentioned earlier. Your vendor must have at least two completely redundant data centers, or more if possible. These data centers need to be geographically separated and must have their own individual networks for the delivery of your mail. Why is so important? Because the Internet is not perfect and was designed so if one network failed, other networks would carry the traffic. But those failures usually take place at or close to a data center which means if your vendor is operating out of one data center, you are rolling the dice in hopes there is never a failure. Two data centers running completely rundant equipment gives you that extra level of comfort knowing if one center went dark, you can keep delivering your mail. Global has three data centers operating in a completely redundant mode to help our clients get the most comfort with reliability.

Seed Mailboxes and Delivery Monitoring

A seed mailbox is an email address that you can add to your list to make sure the message was received at the major and minor ISP's. Most reputable vendors will have a collection of seed mailbox addresses you can add to your list. They should also 24x7 delivery monitoring to make sure your message does not cause a block or deferral to take place on the sending IP address. It is so easy to overlook this step when choosing a vendor and without seed mailboxes and delivery monitoring you are literally mailing without sight. It's like throwing a few dollars off a bridge each time you mail because you will never know if your message made it to the ISP's or major mail gateways.

Conditional or Dynamic Content

The future with email marketing is all about personalization. Your recipients will react more strongly when they receive a message that looks like it was custom-made just for them. For example, you can send one message to your entire mailing list but recipients who have purchased in the past might get a 10% off coupon and customers who have only window shopped may get a 25% coupon. That's dynamic content! Or you could deliver advertisments in your message that are custom-fit for the recipient. The days of just sending the same message to everyone on your list is quickly coming to an end. The conditional content / dynamic content system at Global allows you to use IF/THEN and value comparisons to deliver customized messages inside the base message you send. Exmaple: If the customer spent over 200.00 *and* has a value of "N" in mail merge field 10, THEN add this content into their message.

A Full Set of Features

If you don't need powerful features now, you will some day, and switching vendors because they don't have the features you need is quite unpleasant. Changing list formats, re-learning a new system, etc. is all un-necessary. Your vendor should have the basic set of features plus powerful features you may need down the road. Detailed reports showing delivery statistics such gross/net HTML opens, gross/net clicks, complaints, unsubscribes, tell-a-friend activity, as well as detailed bounce reporting is a must-have. Be sure your vendor has all of the data available because you will need features and facts as your list grows. List Manipulation

You need the flexibility to create sub-lists or even sub-sub lists from your main mailing list. For example, A/B splits, Nth list pulls, field matching (zip code = 89043), multi-field matching (user lives in Texas and is female), are all features you need from your vendor. If you do not need list manipulation features right now, you will someday soon - so be sure your vendor has the list manipulation tools available. With Global, you can split your list into many different pieces based on list values, Nth, or A/B splits. Plus, if we don't have a special split you need, we will design it into the tool free of charge!

Customization Features

Every day we hear from our clients about features they wish they had available. Some of the features are very specialized to their industry, but all features are important to us. You need a vendor that can customize features, tools, services to fit your needs and the customziation must be free or at a very low cost. Global will design any feature, tool, or special service that takes less than 2 hours of programming -- free of charge. This gives you the ultimate flexibility when you need it.

All-inclusive Rates

Many of our competitors charge you separately for different services or features. That's OK but many times those extra features add-up and wind up costing you a lot more than you had in your budget. You need to know what you will be paying every month, or very close to that amount to avoid surprises. We have clients that signed-up with our service telling us some amazing stories of the hidden fees and extra charges they were forced to pay elsewhere. With Global you only pay based on the volume of mail you send. No extras, period.

We hope you discovered some new insights with the above information and we look forward to having you as a client. There are many email marketing vendors and ESP's out there but it's easy to separate the good from the bad once you know what to look for. Call us anytime at 800-707-7074 or email our sales group at SALES@GLIQ.COM If you want to speak with the owner of the firm, please email John Brogan at JBROGAN@GLIQ.COM anytime. We care about our clients so you can speak with anyone.

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