On Message with Ben Gross

New Developments in Outbound Email Marketing

June 8th, 2006

Managing large email lists is complex and time intensive, and while improvements in anti-spam technology may be a godsend for end users and system administrators, they are causing nightmares for companies that have (more or less) legitimate reasons for sending out large quantities of email.

Partly because it’s so easy to demonstrate the return on investment from improving “deliverability,” the market for companies that can help with outbound mail is doing quite well, measured both in terms of revenues, and in terms of new investment. Companies like Email Labs, Quadramail, Skylist, Strongmail, Lyris, are all competing for a slice of the market.

Traditionally, companies like this have focused on integration with CRM and transactional systems, and there has been a new round of development in this area as well.

For example, iPost recently announced integration with MarketLive version 5. MarketLive 5 includes a software developers kit (SDK) that lets its clients collect and analyze behavioral data from their customer databases to target and analyze their email campaigns, and supports integration with tools and services from other vendors, including Salesforce.com, and Omniture.

Given the number of firms competing in this market, it’s hard to gauge which ones are likely to do well over time, but consolidation seems likely, and that will help create a sharper distinction between responsible “3rd class” emailers and spammers.

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