Customer segmentation and personalization, along with better vendor selection, can help boost your e-mail marketing results.

By Reported Donna Loyle

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Not all ESPs are created equally, says Daniels. “While ESPs’ application features have not changed significantly during the past year, larger differences can be found among the providers’ usability, breadth of services and metric clarity,” he notes.

For example, 61 percent of ESPs remove hard bounces from their delivery-rate calculations, he says. This lowers the gross denominator and inflates their published delivery rates. “Such a widespread practice makes it impossible to accurately compare ESPs on important metrics such as deliverability,” Daniels cautions.