Red Pill Releases New Vendor Guide

03/15/11

By Ken Magill

Email marketing consultancy Red Pill Email has unveiled the newest version of its Email Vendors Features and Functions Guide, a comprehensive view of the features and functions of 28 email service providers.

Priced at $500, the guide comes with a “Decision Matrix” application that allows buyers to weight different features and functions to help them identify the vendors that most closely meet their needs. The price of the guide includes a 30-minute discussion with the author.

The highly technical guide is not for email rookies, however. It is aimed at the technically savvy folks who roll up their sleeves and deploy campaigns, and who know what they want in an email vendor.

“Of course it’s complicated,” said John Caldwell, founder of Red Pill Email, a consultancy that specializes in the tactical and technical aspects of email. “When you move from one vendor to another, it’s going to cost you $100,000 to move if you have any kind of integration. You’re basically divorcing one vendor and marrying another. You don’t to marry her to find out there’s extra equipment you didn’t bank on.”

The guide was developed by asking the vendors more than 200 questions on subjects such as reporting capabilities and ISP relations.

“This guide allows people to cut through the process where vendors are telling them, ‘yeah, we can do everything’ and you get there and you find out they can’t,” said Caldwell.

He said the guide included some trick questions that a technical person would spot right away. As a result, a vendor making claims of capabilities it doesn’t have will be easier for them to ferret out.

“For example, one of the participants boasts a relational data system … it’s not really a true relational data system,” Caldwell said. “When you see someone that claims to have a relational data system but can’t do multiple indices, they’re probably lying.”

Notably absent from the guide are CheetahMail and Epsilon.

“CheetahMail didn’t meet the deadline and Epsilon declined to participate,” said Caldwell.

Access the guide here.

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