Greed is Good

Those who know me well, know that I am a huge movie buff. I can recount entire scenes, soundtracks and best of all, memorable movie quotes… this is all much to the dismay of my wife and my family. As they are the ones that have to listen as my brother and I recite, verbatim, memorable scenes from Hollywood’s best and worst movies.

Wall Street is a movie that has definitely stood the test of time, it has been cited countless times in popular culture and is often viewed as the most authentic portrayal of 1980′s Wall Street excess. Today the film still has relevance and Hollywood has decided to bring back Wall Street ultimate villain, Mr. Gordon Gekko. Gekko, the man who argued that, “greed, for lack of a better word, is good” will without a doubt have had a role in the financial meltdown that ensued in 2007 in the next installment.

So what does my memorization of movie lines and Wall Street have to do with marketing? Ummmm… just about everything! Mr. Gekko was onto something when he said that greed was good. We have all been conditioned since we were very young that greed is bad and that sharing is good. The value of sharing is taught by parents and teachers to children as early as possible. When it comes to marketing services… particularly email marketing, sharing is bad… very bad and greed is good. Let me explain…

Most email service providers in the current marketplace have technology platform’s that sit on top of shared infrastructure. This means that these companies have bundled their servers together to create a pool of resources that are available to all of their clients. In a shared environment, everything is queue based or in layman’s terms, everyone gets in line. Want to process a list? Get in line. Want to send an email? Get in line. Who are you in line with? Your email providers other customers; which who knows… may just be your competitor. Wouldn’t that be a real shame if your biggest competitor was getting their emails out the door while you were stuck in line behind them?

It is certainly no secret that email marketing is one of the most effective tools in online marketing. Which is why Forrester has projected that email spending is set to nearly double in the next 5 years. This is not good news if you are on a shared environment because this means that companies are sending a lot more emails. The more people are sending… the more they will be taxing system resources. During critical, high volume retail periods (think Black Friday) this is very bad news.

If you have experienced downtime, resource or mailing issues this past Black Friday or at some point in the past… you certainly know the anger and frustration that accompanies such issues. So in an effort to keep stress levels as low as possible this holiday season, marketers need to look for a solution that is based on dedicated resources and not shared. Most Zeta Mail clients will tell you that this peace of mind in invaluable. There is another alternative but this one includes copious amounts of Eggnog and Holiday Punch which at the end of the day may do more harm than good.

So… at the end of the day, when it comes down to selecting an ESP, greed is most definitely good! You don’t want to be sharing precious resources during those narrow windows of opportunity the holiday season presents.

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