Email Connect and Only Influencers recently polled brands with plans to conduct request for proposals (RFPs) for email service providers (ESPs) to gather insights on how COVID-19 disrupted RFP activity.
According to the report, 35% of companies that planned to hold an RFP in 2021 postponed or cancelled their plans, compared to 40% of companies that cancelled their plans in 2020. To contextualise, 37.2% of respondents had no plans to conduct RFPs in 2021 or in 2022. 30.2% of companies planned to hold an ESP RFP in 2021 and followed through on their plans.
Companies held RFPs for a variety of reasons, including having outgrown existing platforms, to test new platforms, and being tired of their existing vendor. When asked which ESP features are most important to brands, 74.4% of brands ranked reporting tools/BI, followed by client service/support, (72.1%), optimisation/testing (67.4%), and more.
ESPs like Iterable, Braze, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Klaviyo are few of the popular ESPs. When it comes to customer data platforms (CDPs), 46.3% of firms say they aren't planning to implement one right now, while 29.3% already have.
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