OK, OK, I know…. Why would any company, in their right mind, refer their paying customers to a competitor?
Without understanding the reasoning, I can definitely understand why the majority of people would initially think it’s stupid, makes no sense and is the dumbest business decision that they have ever heard.
As an ESP (Email Service Provider), why would Email Answers refer our customers to other ESPs?
To fully understand why we would refer our customers to our competitors, you will first need to understand what we do and the services we provide. Email Answers offers many service that all revolve around email marketing. We are an Enterprise ESP, Email Publisher, Email Marketing Agency, Managed Email Marketing Service Provider and provide Email List Cleaning and Validation Services.
Since eList Manager, which is our Enterprise Email Marketing Platform is primarily used by large marketing companies, Fortune 1000 and lead generation companies, it would not be the right fit for a company who has an email list of 5,000 to 100,000 records and isn’t marketing to their database on a constant basis. Since a large portion of our business is email list cleaning and validation, we are constantly speaking to customers who place orders on our website, for this service, who either have problems with their current ESP or are just starting to send email marketing campaigns to their customer base.
Some of these customers are either having a problem or not happy with their current ESP, due to the customer service they are receiving or email platform they are currently using. Since a large percentage of our customers, who have their email list cleaned and validated, wouldn’t be a good fit for our eList Manager Platform, due to their list size or marketing plan, we refer them to ESPs we feel would be the best fit for their needs. We can be unbiased in our recommendations, because we do not get paid for these referrals or receive a commission from the ESPs we refer our customers too. We provide these ESP referrals to assist our customers in making a good decision and so they don’t make the mistake of choosing the wrong ESP to work with.
Sometimes it’s not about making money, but more about providing a service above and beyond what our customer expects. We strive to build ongoing business relationships by providing an extraordinary customer service experience. This is the reason that a large percentage of our new business is generated by referrals from our existing customers. This is also evidenced by what our customers think of the service we provide, as seen in our Aggregated Survey Reviews.
On an average monthly basis, we refer 50-70 of our email validation customers to other trusted and vetted ESPs. We have found, as a byproduct of our referrals, we now have these ESPs referring their customers to us, who are in need of having their email list scrubbed and validated.
With any successful business, you need to look at the long term and not think about short term results. Building long lasting relationships with your customers will benefit you more than you realize down the road. Don’t work for today, work to build a future for tomorrow.