By JD Engelbrecht, MD at Everlytic

Delivering email at scale is a technically challenging endeavour, and getting it wrong could shut down the entire email communication channel. In fact, this is why most businesses turn to email service providers (ESPs) to deliver messages on their behalf, rather than trying to do this on their own. 

It is important that the sender domain reputations of both the ESP and the sender are as positive as possible, to ensure receiving email domains and the server trust and accept the content. This mostly comes down to spam monitoring organisations wanting to protect email recipients from spam, content that is not relevant, or even worse, harmful, as in the case of phishing emails.

So, what should organisations be looking for in a reputable provider? Here are five things that differentiate an average email service provider from a good one:

1. Having a reputation as a trusted email provider

When an ESP’s sender domain reputation is above a certain threshold, there is a level of trust which means the email domains receiving the email will accept almost all email from that ESP. This will generally happen regardless of blemishes that the sender domain might contain. 

2. Having the right people on hand if things go wrong

A reputable provider should have dedicated resources who are constantly monitoring delivery, sender reputation performance and key performance indicators which are critical to success. Spam monitoring organisations rarely inform you of blacklistings which makes it difficult to pin-point the cause of the issue. Leading ESP’s dedicated resources are able to identify and manage any issues immediately.

3. Having industry relationships matter

To effectively manage the delivery of emails at scale, it greatly benefits you if your ESP has relationships with relevant internet service providers as well as managers of large email domains - typically when they are clients of the ESP. These are things Everlytic have in place. 

4. Data insight and scaled infrastructure enhances delivery

A well-managed ESP should have its own internal scoring mechanisms to classify recipients based on their holistic engagement, and then group these various classes of engaged recipients on appropriate IPs in order to ensure that highly-engaged recipients get to receive their mail first, and consistently, whilst bad data doesn’t spoil the delivery of the good. In other words, strategically balancing different content and contacts across a wide range of IPs evens out email delivery so that if one IP address is flagged, other IP addresses are still able to deliver emails - this is referred to as email blending. 

Organisations should look for a scaled ESP that has hundreds of IP addresses that are actively and strategically managed.

The inverse of email blending is appropriate when you have highly engaged contacts and low complaint rates. Most leading ESPs will offer dedicated IP addresses that isolate performance to only your data, content, and sending habits. This is particularly useful for transactional email, used for sending OTPs, account verification mails, invoices, and the like. 

5. Engaged support and service makes everything quicker

Availability, knowledge, experience, expertise, and commitment are crucial. These are characteristics of leading ESPs who position themselves as trusted advisors and partners. Not only are queries and support requests dealt with quicker, but your strategy gets a lift. Having experts available helps you deliver a better strategy and helps you execute it faster.

Asking your potential service provider whether they have the above in place will ensure that you select a leading ESP, minimising the possibility of your emails being marked as spam, or even worse, being blacklisted by monitoring organisations. Choosing a provider that meets these five criteria can give you a head start as you strive for email marketing success.