The twelve jobs of emailing as seen by the email platforms

As you may have noticed, in our series of interviews with email platforms, the questions were always the same. The objective was obvious, to have the opportunity to compare some of their answers. Tomorrow we will reach the 20th interview with ExactTarget, so this is the opportunity to make a first analysis.

The question to be analyzed today is this:

What are the 3 main challenges for the next few months in the emailing world?

First observation: out of sixty possible responses (3 challenges x 20 platforms), we have 21 different answers. And of these 21 answers, ten were cited only once: Data quality, Real time, Behavioral, Object line, Preference center, Social CRM, Team organization, Marketing pressure, Emailing culture, Engagement.

Dolist.net is the only one to have two new challenges out of the three it proposed: Data quality and preference center. And indeed, during the interviewDolist.net was very different in its speech and in the way it put forward its values.

Emailing challenges: Top 3 sending platforms

1. Mobile : 15 quotes
2. Deliverability: 5 quotes
3. Multichannel: 4 quotes

The clear winner is mobile, which was cited by 15 out of 20 sending platforms. Even better, mobile was cited as the top challenge by 9 routers.

We can see the gap with the second of this top is very important, three times less quotations.

And this is obviously a trend that can be seen in trade shows and other conferences. The proportion of events on the subject of mobile emailing or responsive email is extremely high.

Moreover, only two routers do not mention mobile or multichannel in the challenges of emailing, they are ContactLab and Message Business. Message Business which only mentions the end of "Mass Marketing" as a challenge in emailing.

Six platforms cite both mobile and deliverability, they are:

• Sarbacane
• EmailStrategy
• Mailin
• Oxemis
• Posta Nova
• MailingReport

I'd be interested in hearing from you if you, like me, see some consistency in the profile of these six email routers.

On the other hand, a number of email platforms cite very few issues in the top 3, and these are generally routers with features related to automation, CRM database management and business intelligence. These are generally the biggest players, those with a large portfolio of advertisers.

What conclusions can be drawn?

The first thing is that by asking the platforms to limit themselves to the three challenges that they felt were priorities, the information that emerges is necessarily reductive. But in general, the three challenges outlined are consistent with the rest of the interviews, and especially with the strategic direction of the various email platforms.

For example, the fact that Cabestan is the only one to mention Social CRM represents very well the directions the company is taking.

More generally, the number of challenges cited underlines the incredible complexity of emailing issues. As some platforms explained in the interviews, while emailing was once seen as a simple and affordable technology, things have changed. It's this change and complexity that needs to be the focus of their efforts to support advertisers.

Lastly, social networks are not often mentioned. The multi-channel aspect takes the upper hand, which is a healthy viewpoint for the future.

The full list of challenges cited by the email platforms

1. Mobile - 15
2. Deliverability - 5
3. Multichannel - 4
4. Automation - 3
5. Data management / CRM - 3
6. Business Intelligence - 2
7. Social networks - 2
8. Big Data - 2
9. Segmentation / Targeting - 2
10. Customization - 2
11. The end of mass-marketing - 2
12. Data quality - 1
13. Real Time - 1
14. Behavioural - 1
15. Object line - 1
16. Preference center - 1
17. Social CRM - 1
18. Team organization - 1
19. Marketing Pressure - 1
20. Emailing Culture - 1
21. Commitment - 1