An email service provider (ESP) is a company that offers email marketing or email services.
Services offered
An ESP may provide tracking information showing the status of emails sent to each member of an address list. ESPs also often provide the ability to segment an address list into interest groups or categories, allowing the user to send targeted information to people who they believe will value the correspondence.
An ESP will provide a service which may include the following features:
*Ability to create templates for sending to contacts and/or use pre-made templates
*A subscriber list, which is uploaded by the user for distributing messages. This may be enhanced with custom fields in order to hold additional information for each subscriber for filtering and targeted messaging purposes
*A send engine, which allows users to distribute their message to the subscribers
*Updating of the subscriber list to suppress those requesting to be unsubscribed
*Statistical reviews of each email sent to measure the success rate of the campaigns
*Testing of templates for compatibility with email applications
*Spam testing to gauge the score of the email against known factors that will place the template at risk of being blocked
*The ability to send both
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...
and
plain text
In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects ( floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a lim ...
formats to improve delivery success rates (known as Multi-Part
MIME
A mime artist, or simply mime (from Greek language, Greek , , "imitator, actor"), is a person who uses ''mime'' (also called ''pantomime'' outside of Britain), the acting out of a story through body motions without the use of speech, as a the ...
)
*The ability to customise dynamically the content of emails that are sent out, to tailor personalised and relevant communications
The level of service provided can be according to the above basic features, or the number of subscribers uploaded, or the frequency of use – or any combination of the above criteria.
All ESPs have the same basic features and functionality, however they vary greatly in volumes, policies, and email delivery ability, which makes the selection of an appropriate ESP critical to both the success of an email marketing campaign and the cost effectiveness of its implementation.
ESP's policies, also known as terms and conditions (such as an
acceptable use policy
An acceptable use policy (AUP)—also referred to as an acceptable usage policy or, in certain commercial contexts, a fair use policy (FUP)—is a formal set of guidelines established by the administrator, proprietor, or operator of a computer ...
), are meant to prevent abuse by users in order to ensure that no
spam
Spam most often refers to:
* Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
...
is sent through their systems. This is intended to result in the best possible delivery rates, with no messages blocked as spam. Some ESPs cooperate with
mailbox provider
A mailbox provider, mail service provider or, somewhat improperly, email service provider is a provider of email hosting. It implements email servers to send, receive, accept, and store email for other organizations or end users, on their behal ...
s, through organizations such as the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, to ensure compliance with legislation and best practices, and get
feedback
Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause and effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handle ...
on the messages they send.
Misunderstandings
According to
The Spamhaus Project
The Spamhaus Project is an international organisation based in the Principality of Andorra, founded in 1998 by Steve Linford to track email spammers and spam-related activity. The name ''spamhaus'', a pseudo-German expression, was coined by Li ...
glossary, mass or bulk mailing is not
spam
Spam most often refers to:
* Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
...
if it is solicited. By accepting a dirty list (a list containing some addresses without the knowledge and agreement of their owners), an ESP puts its reputation in jeopardy, which may affect its ability to deliver messages.
[Spamhaus definitions o]
spam
an
waterfalling
(on the same page)
See also
*
Email marketing
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to s ...
*
Bulk email software
References
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Email