What's an ESP?

If you’re a marketer, you’ve probably heard the email marketing buzzword “ESP.” In the past, email marketers were content using a single email provider to do all of their sending, riding the ebb and flow of that particular provider. Today, the best email marketers use multiple ESPs to handle their sending for multiple reasons. But let’s take a step back. “What is an ESP?”

Definition

An ESP (or Email Service Provider) is the entity that delivers the actual email. While popular emailing platforms are often referred to as ESPs, marketers consider the actual sending or delivery service the ESP. For example, Amazon SES is one of the most popular ESPs on the market. It does not handle campaign building or email creatives. Instead, it handles the actual sending of each email.

Why would I use one?

Instead of sending emails through Mailchimp or other common email services, email marketers utilize ESPs for their flexibility. Using a singular emailing service limits you to the whims and restrictions of that provider. Your deliverability rates are at the mercy of the provider and if your account get suspended or fails to send, you’re out of options. Utilizing one or more ESPs to handle your sending allows you to maximize deliverability, build failover options, warm up accounts and IPs at your pace and much more.

Which ESP should I use?

Our best suggestion is to use multiple! Most accounts are free to sign up and allow you to get a baseline on statistics such as deliverability and conversion rates before fully committing. By utilizing two or more ESPs at once, you can get a performance baseline and make better decisions for your specific emailing practices going forward.

How can boberdoo help?

boberdoo provides a complete emailing platform that integrates with multiple 3rd party ESPs including Sendgrid, Amazon SES, Mailgun, Sparkpost, Mailjet and even custom SMTPs. If you’d like to get started, we’d love to help. Click the link below!