Forrester Wave Report Cites Email Marketing Service Provider Leaders
- Written by Demand Gen Report Team
- Published in DemandGen Reports
As part of its Wave report on Email Marketing Service providers (ESPs), Forrester reviewed 15 vendors against 69 criteria and ranked Responsys and ExactTarget at the top of the pack. All eight Leaders were narrowly separated and achieved Leader status through innovation and a commitment to advancing client education and sophistication.
Evaluated vendors included: Acxiom, Alterian, BlueHornet, ClickSquared, Datran Media, e-Dialog, Emailvision, Epsilon, ExactTarget, Experian Marketing Services, Lyris, Responsys, Silverpop, Yesmail, and Zeta Interactive.
Forrester’s March 2009 US Interactive Marketing Forecast Online Survey found that 92% of respondents are currently using email marketing and spending is expected to balloon to $2 billion dollars by 2014.
When Forrester surveyed 218 clients of the vendors in this wave on how the current economic situation is altering their email programs, very few marketers cited budget cuts. Instead, clients are more demanding of their email service providers because marketers are increasing the relevance of their programs. Email marketing frequency is growing and marketers look to ESPs to offset staffing losses, according to Forrester.
The services evaluation included vendor and executive surveys as well as executive interviews.
The report found among the leaders best aligned for large enterprise deployments, Responsys was noted for its comprehensive offerings and functionality, as well as its client satisfaction with its innovation.
ExactTarget was noted for its ability to cater to any market segment. Forrester referenced the company’s “highly usable self-service application and growing services organization that offers the ability for its personnel to be deployed at the client location. With high satisfaction scores and online community, ExactTarget can successfully meet marketers’ complex business needs.”
Another vendors singled out in the report was e-Dialog for its comprehensive application functionality, the ability to quickly segment and query large amounts of data and automate the testing process. Acxiom was acknowledged for quick integration with mobile and social functionality to meet the growing needs of the email marketer. Acxiom is well equipped to manage large global enterprises particularly in a full-service manner.
Yesmail’s variety of self-service and collaborative self-service was called out for its ability to serve a vast selection of market segments. Forrester cited the vendor’s robust tool for managing all aspects of email campaign deployment, including visual tools, a marketing calendar, and OLAP analytics for campaign analysis.
Experian Marketing Services’ platform was credited for excellent production services capabilities as well as a comprehensive self-service application (Experian CheetahMail) that caters to the 40% of its clients that work with the vendor in that fashion. It earned a perfect customer satisfaction score and has a long history of complex data integrations as well as a global footprint.
Epsilon’s DREAM messaging platform was noted for its comprehensive offering all of the necessary functionality to manage and execute mailings. According to the Forrester report, 70% of Epsilon’s clients engage with them in a full or collaborative service manner. Overall, 60% of their clients are full-service, and most are satisfied with the overall account service.