Vendor Features and Functions Guide 2011 European edition

Transcription

1 Vendor Features and Functions Guide 2011 European edition by Red Pill in cooperation with monday EXCERPT Red Pill and monday All Rights Reserved

2 Table of Contents of Full version Introduction 3 Executive Summary 4 Participant Selection 5 Vendor Overview 5 Using This Guide 7 Features & Functions 8 Business Offerings 8 Business & Pricing Models 8 Professional Services 10 Product Offerings 13 MTA Platform 13 Supported APIs 15 Supported Authentication 15 Data Control: 17 Queries & Segmentation: 18 Form Processing: 18 Exporting Data via the User Interface: 19 Data & Segmentation Scoring: 19 Deliverability & List Hygiene: 20 Campaign Building & Workflow: 22 Asset Support: 23 Deployment Maintenance: 24 Pre-Configured Programs: 24 Content Support: 25 User Support: 26 Campaign Building & Workflow Scoring: 27 Testing & Reporting 27 Testing: 27 Reporting: 28 Combined Testing & Reporting Score: 29 Third-Party Integration 30 Deliverability 30 Suppression Management 31 Analytics 32 CRM 33 Ad-serving Integration 34 Training & Support 35 Training 35 Vendor Scores Across All Categories 37 Overall score 39 S.A.M.E. 40 Glossary of Terms 41

3 Introduction continues to be a popular marketing channel in today s challenging business environment. It s accountable and measurable characteristics and sophisticated deployment options make it an indispensable tool for building customer relationships. And with that, selecting the right vendor to assist businesses in their marketing needs becomes a choice not only of practical, but also a tactical and strategic significance. Over the years service provider marketplace has become a more and more competitive and while time progresses, basic distribution functions seem to be available through most platforms. But the needs and whims from both the B2B and B2C customers translate into the future requirements for the individual marketeers. Channel usage is maturing and still expanding. Both in growth numbers and through tooling and services that adopt to the changing way brands communicate with people in a multi-channel world. This makes the market for marketing solutions a multi-faceted one. The vendor market is also a place of evolution, for the gross of the vendors are driven both by technical feature development as by catering to the changing marketeers needs. This makes it a very exciting industry to work in. But from the outside a very untransparant one to choose from. I hope that this excerpt will give you some insight into the comprehensiveness of the guide and the many hours of the work that went into it. And though it isn t a replacement for your selection endeavors, will guide and assist in your road to find the ideal service provider. Jordie van Rijn contributing editor to the European Vendor Features & Functions Guide Contact Information for the European report For all inquiries regarding the European Vendor Features & Functions Guide please contact me at the following address: Jordie van Rijn web jvrijn@ monday.com PAGE 3

4 Executive Summary The European Vendor Features & Functions Guide helps marketeers through the untransparent arena of vendors. This guide highlights the features provided and functions supported by a variety of commercial messaging deployment tools available to small, medium, and enterprise users. Vendor offerings include hosted, onpremise, and hybrid solutions and services. With so many vendors aggressively opting for customers in a competitive marketplace, 25 European headquartered and market-active providers were surveyed with over 200 questions across 8 top-level categories regarding their technical product offerings and service options important to prospective users. The European market is very differently constructed than the American one. Language barriers have somewhat shielded local players in the past and allowed them to flourish. Some nationals keep true to their base market and focus on them only. But as services are becoming more widespread, some are also looking to expand abroad. On the other hand international and global service providers are entering the European market starting with the most interesting expansion countries, sometimes very aggressively. Companies looking for an emessaging solution now have a bigger choice-set presented before them. It makes the market even less transparent and the selection process more complex. In this competitive environment we see that vendors are developing solutions that target certain industries, such as retail and publishing, with built-in functionality that cuts down on customization requirements for commonly used feature sets within those verticals. To simplify messaging, vendors are also developing deployment tools friendly to organizations with limited technical or marketing resources; several now offer preconfigured messaging programs, such as abandoned order and win-back programs. In a multi-channel world with advanced communication possibilities, companies are looking for messaging solutions that are compatible with their current and future toolings, both looking at total messaging solutions, but more and more recognizing the need for compatibility with in-place systems and their future counterparts. Buyers should not focus on price considerations alone. And also allow for business requirements and contact strategy to determine the added value. In an increasingly crowded market, buyers need to find providers that offer scalable technology and pricing. PAGE 4

5 PDF Report and Decision matrix There are two parts to this Guide; a PDF report and a desktop application that we call the Decision Matrix. The PDF document provides general overview information about the product and service offerings of the participants, and the ranking of participants across all categories. We realize that most users of deployment products only use about 30% of the features and functions available from any vendor; however not all organizations use the same part of the offerings. For that reason we have developed our Decision Matrix. The Decision Matrix is a desktop application that provides the user the ability to weight those features and functions important to their organization to better refine their search for the best vendor for their needs..after the user has weighted their needs by category, the Decision Matrix will display those vendors that most closing match in ascending order. The Decision Matrix allows the user to see a detailed view of each vendor the features and functions that the vendor provides ordered by category. For those users requiring or interested in Professional Services, the number of staff and average years in the industry will also be displayed. PAGE 5

6 Content The Vendor Features & Functions Guide(s) features side-by-side comparisons of 25 European and 28 North American vendors ranging from small market table vendors to commercial MTAs and points in between, with over 200 essential questions asked. For the first time, a desktop application was added that helps users to identify the vendors best suited to their needs based on their own business criteria. The Marketing functions and Features Guide will present comparison tables and graphs, in 9 different categories that look at the features and functions. It explores virtually all functional areas of interest to marketers and end users. Over 1000 hours went into the making of this Guide; written from the perspective of an experienced hands-on marketer. Contact Information for the European Guide For all inquiries regarding the European Vendor Features & Functions Guide, promotion, usage and further details please contact me at the following address: Jordie van Rijn web jvrijn@ monday.com The guide(s) are available for purchase at: PAGE 6