See part one of this post here.

Why would you pay another company for email services? 

One of the biggest reasons I already mentioned above – relationships with the ISPs.   It would be very difficult for most chambers to dedicate a staff person to constantly monitor their outgoing email to see if it looks like spam and build relationships with the various ISPs to make sure their email is getting delivered.  In fact, many of the ISPs don’t have the staff to work with every small and mid-sized business - they would rather work with email service providers that represent multiple companies. 

Another reason is the reporting.  Email service providers all offer various levels of reports for you to understand which members are reading your emails and plan your future communications.   See who opened emails, who clicked on which links, which emails bounced back, etc.  And some services allow you to view each profile’s past history, knowing how many/which of your previous emails they’ve viewed as well.

How effective is the tracking?  

This varies by provider and also depends on a number of other factors.  Even some of the best permission-based email marketing packages can only track email to a +/- 10% accuracy rate. Reading email offline, Blackberries, firewalls and SPAM filters can all cause inaccuracies both positive and negative. As firewalls, anti-virus and anti-spam software continue to get better, getting your message through will become even more difficult. 

Using an email service provider whose sole business is to deliver email may become a necessary business expense for your chamber as you become more reliant on email.  These companies must stay current on technology and spam filtering trends to ensure the greatest percentage of your emails gets through – that’s what you pay them to do.  Email is becoming a necessary tool for you to do business and something that you may want or need to pay for to receive better delivery rates.

You’ve heard the expression, “You are what you communicate.”  This certainly holds true for email – you still need to consider the content of your message.  But you must also consider what you are if what you communicate is never seen.