Email Marketing For Your Small Business - Selecting The Right Server

Email marketing campaigns for small businesses often go unnoticed but it is not a marketing technique to be ignored. Selecting the right server for your email marketing can be tricky, and therefore it is important to know what you need in order to properly set up your email campaign.

This post will cover how to choose between a shared or dedicated server, as well as some of the common features and benefits associated with each type of service. It will also touch on any required considerations such as monthly storage limit or maximum number of mailing lists allowed.

By the end of this post you should have a good idea of what email marketing server will best suit your needs as well as how to properly set it up with your email marketing software.

Selecting The Right Email Marketing Server : Shared Vs Dedicated

When it comes to selecting the right server, there are two options available: shared and dedicated. These two choices may appear to be straightforward, but they can have a huge impact on the overall performance of your campaign, so much so that choosing a shared server for your small business' email marketing campaign is not advised.

Shared servers are often used by many different businesses since they offer great value for money when compared to dedicated servers. Shared servers are also able to offer more efficient pricing models than dedicated servers, which is extremely appealing to those looking for maximum return on their investment and who are not too bothered about server administration.

However, shared servers have a major draw-back that affects your small business' email marketing campaign – they do not provide any physical security around the server's files. This means that there is a possibility that you will experience server downtime for the duration of the campaign but also that email messages can be lost during these periods.

Dedicated servers on the other hand, provide server security around data traffic and will prevent email messages being lost during downtime. There are still a lot of shared servers out there that don't allow email messages to be viewed from client's end but they can be easily prevented by using your custom templates or adding a unique signature address to all outgoing emails. Dedicated servers are typically more expensive than shared ones but their ability to provide maximum security and stability for your email campaign is worth the cost.

The matter of server security aside, it is important for your small business' email marketing campaign to be on a reliable, stable server before you need to invest in additional resources such as more mailing lists or templates. This will ensure that the progress of your campaign is not impeded by any server issues that may result from a shared server.

Your email marketing campaign on a shared server is also at risk of being Spam Compliant. Before deciding to allow your small business' email marketing campaign to run on a shared server, it's important that you determine whether your domain is part of a valid "opt-in" list for spam removal. If it isn't, then you need to request that your domain be added to the opt-out list before running any email campaigns in order to prevent the emails from being blocked as Spam if they end up being analysed by anti-spam filters.

Conclusion – Choose a Dedicated Server

It is recommended that your small business' email marketing campaign is hosted on a dedicated server to ensure that the performance of your emails are not influenced by any potential server issues, as well as ensuring you have access to all of your data at all times. Having this type of set-up will make it easier for you to add additional resources as the campaign progresses and grow.

If you don't have the capital to invest in a dedicated server for your small business' email marketing campaign, it's advised that you use a free email service such as Yahoo Mail or Hotmail until you're ready to upgrade.