What To Know Before Entrusting Your Email Marketing To Another Agency

Email marketing benefits abound – it can be effectively targeted to increase sales, it can create customer loyalty and it can generate valuable customer feedback. If well implemented, email marketing can also deliver significant return on investment, as well as superior customer engagement metrics.

But not many business owners or marketing managers have the time or extensive knowledge to execute quality email marketing campaigns. So do you go with an agency? Email marketing requires highly focused and technical expertise, coupled with a deep understanding of specific industries and markets. Furthermore, it requires a thorough grasp of best practices. However, all email marketing agencies are not created equally. Here’s what you should know before entrusting your email marketing to another agency. 

Level of expertise

The technical nature of email marketing requires an agency with the right credentials. This means it should have sufficient staff that is trained and specifically proficient in email marketing. Many marketing agencies may claim to incorporate email marketing in their service offerings, but this may not be the case. Find out the composition of the team, their qualifications and the type of projects they have handled before.

Industry knowledge

Different industries require different approaches as far as any marketing campaign is concerned. The same is true of email marketing. The type of agency you use must be familiar with your line of business and its unique peculiarities. An understanding of the nature of your business will also allow the agency to understand your ideas and vision for your company.

Balanced marketing costs

It’s important not to choose an agency based on cost alone. Be especially skeptical if the cost is lower than the industry standard. For the best ROI, look for an agency that has pricing that scales to the size of your database and includes analytics, so you can measure the effectiveness of your investment.

Best practices

Email marketing can be used to reach a very wide audience. And so you should take care to hire an agency that uses ethical email marketing practices. This is because it’s easy to abuse this type of medium and risk the reputation and bottom line of your business. Every email list used should not be outdated, must comply with anti-spam laws and should not be questionable in any way.

In this regard, stay away from agencies that do not use legitimate lists obtained with proper op-ins. The addresses should also be verified for validity to ensure they land in the right inboxes. This will also prevent fines and penalties.

Avoid agencies that are unwilling to try new options, channels or theories. The agency should also use a good mix of plain text in the emails, together with graphics based HTML, to avoid filters and increase deliverability.

Accurate analytics

The email marketing agency should be able to provide accurate metrics on several aspects of the campaign including:

• Open and click rates
• Send success
• Complete registrations
• Complete product purchases

Having accurate analytics will enable you to track the success of the marketing strategy. These statistics can then be interpreted into actionable marketing insights.

Warning signs

There are danger signals to watch out for when recruiting an email marketing agency. They include:

• No physical address or inadequate contact information, including telephone numbers: This could be an individual without the right expertise. In any case, it’s definitely not a trustworthy sign when there’s no way to properly contact the agency.
• Too-good-to-be-true rates: This is because building quality leads, designing a campaign and properly executing it are costly procedures.
• Guaranteed email open rates: It’s impossible to guarantee that audiences will open emails, considering the quality of leads and the type of product or service.
• Lack of concern for the subject line or landing pages: A great email marketer understands the importance of a carefully crafted subject line, which is tailored to generate interest. Additionally, there should be a call to action, which makes it easier to track the success of the marketing strategy.

Think it might be time to put your email marketing in the hands of an agency? Ask us how we can execute email campaigns for your business.