Choosing a Lead Management Solution: Email Service Provider vs. Marketing Automation

Should you use tools such as an email service provider or a marketing automation solution when you are evaluating vendors to automate your lead management program? I realize this is not a fair comparison as they are each distinct marketing tools with a strong case being made for both. But what should you use?

An email service provider (ESP) is an automated email system that has strong email-rendering functionality and best in class deliverability allowing you to create the best design, ensure its delivery and have it all tied back, into your database, allowing both marketing and sales to act and react based on subscribers’ activities. Best in class ESP’s are ExactTarget and Silverpop.

Systems such as Marketo and Eloqua are fully featured marketing automation systems that are used to manage and automate customer interactions based on logic and instructions that you have defined. The system automates these interactions into the scoring of leads, nurturing those leads and finally promoting them to CRM systems like Salesforce when they are ready to be acted on by your sales team. This ensures the leads sales is receiving are ready to buy, increasing the confidence and shortening the close times.

So, why is there confusion on when to use one or the other, they both send email correct? Both are enterprise level programs, and with the strong API engine of ESP’s, like ExactTarget and Silverpop, many of the same features found in a marketing automation tool can be built and delivered using the combination of an ESP and Salesforce. So when should you use one vs the other?

Choose an Email Service Provider (ESP) if:

• You have a very large list, and sending newsletters is your main business requirement.
• You have complex email requirements such as dynamic content or sender information that you need to pull from a system such as Salesforce.
• You want to start small and build your email marketing and nurture program over time.
• You are willing to invest in customizing the solution to achieve the desired results that exactly fit your business.

Choose Marketing Automation Suite if:

• You have a business need to keep marketing and sales databases separate (Marketo treats everyone in their database as a lead.)
• You are looking for out-of-the box lead nurturing and lead scoring capabilities in one system.
• You have dedicated resources to manage the system. As you build out email and nurture campaigns, they are content and resource dependent. The reality is that any system will only be successful if you have the marketing resources allocated to it.

At the end of the day, one could argue that by combining tools such as your CRM solution with an ESP, you can provide much of the same capabilities as a fully featured marketing automation system. The reality is that companies often do not have the resources and budget available to fully implement a marketing automation tool all at once. Using a tool such as ExactTarget allows you to start small and slowly build the capabilities of their lead scoring, nurturing and segmentation strategies into a customized solution that exactly fits their business needs.