'Net Features : email service providers

Microsoft Launches Grown Up Email Service

Michael Garrity — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 22:30:00 GMT

The Outlook email service is a big part of what makes Microsoft’s Office suite of such a success. For many businesses, it’s an essential tool that helps them keep track of more than just email correspondence, but also in-house communications, scheduling, task management, and more.

Apparently the world’s best known software company is looking to build upon the Outlook name with the release of a brand new free email service launched earlier this week, Outlook.com.

Upon first glance, this may seem like a curious decision, as the company already has the widely used Hotmail platform. More so when you compare the features of the two services, which seem basically identical on paper.

However, once you see Outlook.com, you’ll see that they are, in fact, very different products. While Hotmail is littered with gaudy display ads, Outlook.com is are more prudent and professional about the way it presents advertising. Best of all, it doesn’t show any targeted ads inside personal email correspondence with individual people (this doesn’t include newsletters, etc.), which is great for those users who are a little unnerved by the idea of Web-based email programs scanning their messages for advertising purposes.

The service will offer quick and easy access to social networks Twitter and Facebook, allowing users to retweet, Like, or post comments on the content of an email. It also links to the social profiles of the people that users are corresponding with, so their status updates will appear on the right side of the screen (in place of personalized ads). Eventually, it will also feature integration with the Microsoft-acquired Skype video chat service, just not yet.

With its clean, minimal interface, Outlook.com seems to be Microsoft’s attempt to provide a more grown up alternative to Hotmail, which has about as much credibility with Web professionals as a dirty sock.

Outlook.com is already open to the public in a preview period, and users can either create an account or sign in with an existing Hotmail address (which you can “upgrade” to an Outlook.com account). The company is offering nearly unlimited storage, and new accounts will be given access to 7GB of Microsoft SkyDrive cloud storage.

Email Service Providers Become Social-Ready

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:00:00 GMT

One of the benefits of using an email service provider is that the best vendors help support your subscriber acquisition efforts.

ESP’s typically do this by providing Web forms. Content submitted through this forms is then piped from the website collecting the information into the database being stored at the ESP. With the influx of attention around social media however, email service providers are increasingly offering their clients a means to do at least some of this necessary acquisition legwork on popular social media sites – namely Facebook.

To date, most of the work done with “social” on the part of email service providers has revolved around SWYN (Share With Your Network) features which give the ability to post a notice on Facebook and Twitter about the most recent newsletter/email sent, and hope that it gets shared by users. That’s useful but there are other ways to use social media for the sake of email – again, in terms of recipient acquisition.

Email marketing software provider AWeber has been the most recent entrant in the cause to leverage social for the good of email. Users of the service can now enable the Facebook registration feature which automatically prefills a prospective subscriber’s information (name and email) into a Web form, as long as they are logged into the social network.

While the Aweber feature could lower the barriers to acquisition marketers should consider the trust and privacy implications for users who may question the rather aggressive approach.

Website Magazine looked into what other email marketing software and service vendors are doing to support the increasing interest in using social to drive acquisition with email. iContact offers an integrated set of social media tools, including customizable, Facebook-ready sign-up forms, a means to add sharing buttons to emails and Facebook and Twitter publishing. ConstantContact is another that obviously recognizes the role social is playing in email success. It’s Join My Mailing List application, which was launched in late 2009, enables marketers to collect email addresses on their Facebook brand pages. Another of my recommended ESP’s, GetResponse, doesn't offer a Facebook form for subscriptions but does provide an import tool dubbed List Booster which enables email marketers to upload email lists from mail clients or other services, including LinkedIn.

There are of course many others email marketing service providers which offer social sharing features – too many to mention. Collecting subscribers through is only one benefit from being at the intersection of email and social. With the rich data that comes from social interaction, email marketers are also now empowered with an ability to approach those most influential to their success.

One of the problems email marketers have encountered is in understanding who their most influential subscribers are – something which could prove very useful. A new solution from email marketing provider BlueHortnet Networks, dubbed Social Influencers Strategy Blueprint, could be the answer. The solution offers marketers the ability to identify members of their subscriber email list who actively share email content across their personal social networks, segment those subscriber based on their social sharing behavior, and send them targeted email to further motivate social sharing activity. By being able to connect with “influencers”, marketers also have an ability to attract more loyal users, buyers, and subscribers.

What other innovations as an email marketers are you seeing today? And what social media features does your email service provider offer? Share your comments below with other Website Magazine readers!

Switching Email Service Providers

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:30:00 GMT

Recent survey data from Strongmail reveals the majority of businesses employing an email service provider (ESP) have switched within the last two years and another third plan to do so in the next 12 months. Why?

According to the release, “the data shows that 77 percent of these companies have switched providers in the past two years for three main reasons: lack of product features, limited services and high costs.” With such variance in pricing across the industry, I expect that it has more to do with cost than pricing.

Other reasons for switching email service providers include deliverability challenges, the inability to leverage data in campaigns, general dissatisfaction, poor support, system down time, data security and a desire to bring email on-premise. It is interesting to note that deliverability services are consumed at nearly three times the rate of any other ESP service offering.

On a related note, Website Magazine recent post on email metrics has generated a lot of attention so we encourage you to check that out. Our guidance is to do all that you can to optimize email effectiveness before switching email service providers.