In addition, the study showed a growing demand for professional email marketing software. Because of this trend will outsourcing providers need to change their marketing and servicing strategy?

in this market climate want to monetize their existing email database assets they have built up during the boom years, said Jason Rines, CEO of EmailResults.net. would say it's about 50% list management demand and 50% software demand. Managed services have shifted, but only slightly as most companies do not even yet understand the data resources they have. A relationship with a new customer for data management generally starts with a consulting and management role first, than they choose the software option afterward.

There are three reasons for this trend, Cost, Control, and Integration.

1) Cost - When using an outsourcer costs grow linearly with the number of messages that sent. Generally, the user is charged anywhere from $.005 per message to $.05 per message. The cost per message doesn't dramatically decrease as usage increases because they are paying for the outsourcer's overhead (facilities, marketing expenses, software, hardware, personnel, etc.).

Alternatively, once the company builds the infrastructure needed to manage campaigns in-house, the cost per message significantly decreases every time they send more messages. When sending a moderate amount of email messages (around 50,000 messages per month), a company can start seeing a cost advantage from an in-house solution in just a month or two. Many companies have found that they can save tens of thousands of dollars over time and, in some cases, millions, by bringing their email campaigns in-house.

2) When using an outsourcer to manage email campaigns, a company gives up a lot of control. They lose the ability to send "last minute" and/or automatically triggered messages like stock alerts, product alerts, storm warnings, purchase confirmations, etc. because they are required to schedule campaigns well in advance. When used properly, these types of messages can greatly increase customer satisfaction.

They also lose the ability to send messages when they are likely to get a better response because they are limited by the outsourcers schedule as to when you can send messages. Not being able to send messages when you want to can significantly affect your response rates. According to several reports, Tuesday and Wednesday are generally considered to be the best days to send an email campaign and mid-morning or right after lunch is the best time to have an email arrive. If the outsourcer's other clients get the best results by sending emails at the same time, then it's likely that the outsourcer won't be able to handle all the traffic at once forcing the company to send some campaigns on less than ideal days and/or less than ideal times.

Additionally, a company loses a little control over their customer data because they are required to provide the outsourcer with a lot of data in order for them to personalize and send messages. As data changes at the outsourcers as a result of your email campaigns and in the organization's customer database as a result of normal business processes, the company has to spend valuable time and resources keeping the data updated at both places.

Managing email campaigns in-house, however, provides an organization with the ultimate control over email campaigns. It allows them to send messages on short notice, it allows them to send messages on whatever day and at whatever time that gets the best results, and it allows them to maintain all customer data in a single, safe place, your in-house database.

3) We've seen a shift in the ways companies are using email. They are moving beyond email marketing and sending things like email alerts. (I.E.: An insurance company sending storm alerts to their customer with homeowner's policies or a financial services company sending email alerts whenever a stock reaches a certain price) They are using email to send account information and or bills.

To take advantage of these valuable uses of email, an organization's business processes need to be integrated with their email system. If you're a financial services company, your customer database and the database in which you store stock quotes must both be integrated for you to send the stock alerts and daily portfolio updates that stimulate trades and thus increase your revenues. If you're an online retailer, your ecommerce system needs to be able to trigger the order confirmation mailings that increase customer satisfaction. Only an in-house solution can provide you with the integration necessary to maximize the value of your email communication with your customers.

The above article was written by Clint Symons, Publisher of Opt-in News, an online news service. In response, Conor O'Kelly, Marketing Manager, Amateo, adds the following comment:

In concurring with the views expressed, I can vouch that nowhere is this more true than in the hospitality sector. The need for hotel marketers to their "hands on the controls" vis-á-vis e-mail marketing is a critical demand.

Last minute offers, "fire sales" to sell excess inventory due to last minute cancellations, as well as the need for regular updates on points balances, new offers etc. for loyalty club members all necessitate the ability for hotel marketers to have in-house control.

With regard to the best time at which to send e-mails, our experience and feedback from Amateo customers shows that Friday is the best day in terms of effect. Generally couples or individuals spend time at the weekend searching the Internet for hotels and book them on a Monday morning when back at work. A just-in-time offer sent on a Friday at lunchtime or a short while after has proven to be the most timely and most effective.

Amateo are leaders in Marketing Automation and Business Intelligence solutions for the hospitality sector. Amateo's Guest Relationship Optimisation product suite standardises historical guest data stored in multiple hotel property management systems and facilitates revenue generating applications including Amateo 360 (Marketing Campaign Automation), Amateo Portal (Reporting and Analytics) and Amateo Affinity (Loyalty/ Executive Club Schemes).

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