„"No customer ever says: my house, my car, my yacht, my email archive!"“
„The Email archiving is not a door opener in the field of managed services!“ – Benjamin Janssen of diprotec GmbH reported this during his presentation at the Impulse for System Houses event in Kassel in March 2023.
How can an IT service provider successfully market this product?
Email archiving is a complementary product!
This is how Benjamin describes email archiving, which he usually sells bundled with another, more significant service. A good example of this is Microsoft O365.
The diprotec team offers email archiving as a direct service to every existing customer who is involved in a Microsoft O365 or Exchange migration – because it's an essential part of the process!
Of course, this often works exactly the same way with new customers. Benjamin explains: „There have been cases where new customers have said: "It's good that you brought up the topic of email archiving, because our old IT service provider never did it!"“This allowed him to establish himself directly as an expert.”.
„"I'm sorry you need the product, but you have to meet your legal requirements."“
This is how Benjamin deals with customers who don't yet have email archiving. The legal aspect of this topic shouldn't be overlooked. The applicable legal requirements can only be met with a professional email archiving solution. According to the German Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GoBD), all business-relevant emails and their attachments must be stored completely, securely, and in a tamper-proof manner, and must be available at all times.
A little tip from BenjaminAs an IT service provider, you cannot offer legal advice. If clients have doubts, you must refer them to a tax advisor.
Email archiving as an opportunity for long-term customer loyalty
Once the product has been placed at the customer's location, one can speak of an archiving system.„And who cancels their archiving system after 3, 4, or 5 months? Those who use it see it as an inevitable cost (it's "there anyway," just like Microsoft O365)!„