Similar to ancient I work with companies on their online marketing strategies and assist them, when necessary, in
outsourcing or buying in expertise.
Email is a relationship building process just like a face-to-face communication. Outsourcing the full process is a bad idea in that regardless of how good or intuitive the outsourcing is it cannot replace the business owners own feelings, knowledge and motivation about their business.
But outsourcing the process is probably the best way to go. It provides a tried and tested delivery medium to ensure that more of your emails get through to the intended recipient and in today's spam laden email inbox that's important.
All offer easy and straightforward email creation. Important for the client as they can, with some training and support, eventually take over the whole process.
And, with their inbuilt tracking and reporting, personalisation and segmentation facilities can simplify and automate what would otherwise be a headache for most business owners to manage and likely never done effectively.
All in all, the benefits outweigh the costs. The top 15 email marketing providers have been compared in a survey this year:-
Email Marketing Services Review 2010 - TopTenREVIEWS