Why hire a Full-service Email Marketing Agency when it’s one of those marketing strategies that everyone thinks they can handle by themselves. And you’re right if you’re just planning to use it like any other email; write a text, choose the destination and click send.
However, one thing is to know how to use it. Another thing is knowing what makes it work to bring profit for your business. That’s when it’s interesting to rely on professionals. They are people who have tested a million ways to fail with their email campaigns, 😅 which means they know how to avoid it.
When to hire a full-service email marketing agency
Most people consider hiring an email marketing agency when they check the reports and see their metrics decreasing or noticing deliverability problems.
That’s terrible timing. It will cost you more time and money to fix. You could avoid this situation early on when it was easier to solve. Nothing that should worry you about because the right email marketing agency can find a way to improve all your stats.
If you ask us when is the best time to hire a full-service email marketing agency, we would say it is NOW. 😎 However, you will say that we’re biased. Which we are.
An honest answer should be when you’re trying to improve your metrics, have studied everything, and run out of ideas; things are also not working as planned.
Triggers to look for when considering hiring a full-service email marketing agency
When you start to see these triggers happen, it can be considered a warning sign to ask for professional assistance.
Consider this way, at the end of these examples, and you’ll see a sliding bar. Check how many of these signs are or are in the process of happening to you right now. If you reach more than one, you should look for an email marketing professional to assist you.
Increasing or not Reducing Bounce-Rate
Keep a close eye on your email marketing bounce rate because it’s a clear sign when something’s not right. There are many reasons for an increase in bounce rate.
First, you need to see what kind of bounce rate we’re talking about. There is a soft bounce and hard bounce rate; each has very different causes. Soft-bounces can be signs that the recipient’s inbox is complete, the email size was too large for that particular account, or that their server might be down at that moment, just to name a few. It can also mean that anti-spam tools are filtering you.
Hard bounces are a different story. You need to remove immediately those if your email platform hasn’t already. Hard bounces are signs that the email address isn’t there anymore, or they’ve blocked you for some reason.
These can damage your sender reputation, and you should address them immediately.
Alert: It’s also one of the signs that one or more Email Service Providers (ESP) may be filtering you as a potential spammer.
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Having trouble with Email Marketing Open-Rates
To make your email marketing work, you need one thing first: your subscriber needs to open it. It’s mandatory. 😅
If they don’t open your email, you can’t say the beautiful things that will seduce them to click and convert on your landing page or site. That means that you need to increase your open rate to improve all the other metrics as well.
One thing you may know by now. Not every email open is accounted for. If your subscriber doesn’t download images from your server, the email platform has no way to know if they have opened it. Even though you may not trust the metrics entirely, a reduced email open metric is a sign of something not working so well.
The most obvious reason may be that your subscriber’s ESP may have filtered your email into a spam folder or those other category folders. It’s also known as the black hole of email inboxes. 😂
Your Click-Through Rate is Embarrassing
How can you know if the click-through rate (CTR) is low or average in your industry, you may ask? The best way is to benchmark your statistics with the industry average. You can find a very reasonable standard here.
If you are getting CTRs lower than the average, maybe you should consider improving your email marketing game. Perhaps with the help of a full-service email marketing agency? 😉
Like with the open-rate metric, if you don’t increase how many people click on your email, it will have two consequences:
- It will damage your sender’s reputation since ESPs value if people engage with your emails or not. If your subscribers open and click a lot on your emails, it will improve your deliverability. It’s a virtuous cycle.
- The number of people who will get into your landing page or content will be lower, and your return on investment (ROI) will be shorter.
Your Unsubscribe Rate is getting higher.
Please add TWO spaces on the slider if this is happening to you. It’s wrong in several ways. It’s a clear sign that people are not enjoying your emails and don’t want to keep receiving them.
The very opposite of what email marketing should be. Email marketing sends valuable content to people who are anxious to read what you’re sending them. Can you notice the difference?
If you can’t see the difference, slide three spaces on that bar below, please. 😒
You literally have a spam rate.
If you have any spam rate at all, it’s already a reason for great concern. If your spam rate is higher than 0,1%, don’t bother using the slider below. You need to reach a full-service email marketing agency.
However, having spam complaints it’s something that even full-service email marketing agencies can’t fix quickly. It’s a symptom of several bad practices, from subscriber acquisition to irrelevant content and high sending frequency.
A total revamps to your email marketing strategy is mandatory.
What should you look for in a full-service email marketing agency?
Depending on what you’re trying to achieve and your current status, you have several options:
- You just need to assess what is wrong and what can be improved. In that case, you need an email marketing audit.
- You want help with some parts of your email marketing strategy—for instance, responsive design and code verification.
- You want to leave everything to professionals and focus on your overall marketing strategy. That means hiring a full-service email marketing agency.
According to what you’re looking for, the way to find your best partner resides in a few common steps.
Email Marketing Agency Reputation
Their reputation in the market is beyond question their most prized possession for any professional or company. What others say about their work is vital to avoid getting into future problems.
See what they share online. Check for blog posts, social media content, people’s reactions and comments. Based on those testaments, you’re going to trust them or not.
What experience do they seem to have? What brands are they working on?
These are just a few questions that make sense to answer before even reaching them. If you’re buying into their expertise, they better have it.
Email marketing platform agnostic
Why is this important? If you join forces with a team comfortable with just one or two platforms to run your email marketing campaigns, they will influence you into changing to their preferred one.
Also, there’s no one size fits all kind of approach in our perspective. In our view, each customer is different, and we need to find the best solution for their particular goal.
After accurately assessing each client’s whole status and goals, it’s possible to suggest a particular platform.
Budget and business proposal
Before choosing any full-service email marketing agency, you better negotiate how much you’ll be paying for it. It can be a red flag if you receive a quote without any previous assessment of your current status and needs.
There’s no way to measure the amount of work and solutions a job like this needs without asking a few questions. At least they must know how many subscribers you currently have and how many you’re expecting to have in a determined time range. Then, things like your email frequency and industry topics are the least they can ask.
After an extensive study, we can provide a fair quote for each month’s estimated work.
Support and work ethics
To save yourself from future worries, you must know how much support you’ll have in the future. Are they quick to respond? Do they use several ways to be reached and get in touch? How has been their response rate and problem-solving until now?
Another thing to look at is how they speak or produce content about Email Marketing. Is their content advocating the best practices of email marketing? Or do they bend their values according to what clients ask them to do?
In our case, for instance, if you ask us to do something that is spammy or going against email marketing best practices, then it’s better for you to know that it won’t work. We prefer to lose you as a customer instead of going the wrong way. And the reason is simple. It’s for your own good.
Email marketing is really powerful, especially if you do it right. If you want to enjoy this marketing channel’s benefits, you need to do it the right way. You don’t need a full-service email marketing agency to do it wrong. 😅
Wrap-up
After all of this, maybe you have a different idea of email marketing as a potential revenue source. Yes, email is as simple as it gets, and everyone knows how to use it for personal use. Like social media, learning how to use it is different from getting the best out of it.
The feedback we get most from our present clients is that they are only sorry for not seeking specialised help sooner. It is pretty much to understand that you could have won 3 to 4x plus than you are now.
Hiring a full-service email marketing service will increase your budget operations? Sure, it’s an added service. Will it pay off? If you’ll let us do our work, definitely.
You can compare it with the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) approach. You know it works and its importance on your digital marketing strategy. You also understand that it takes some time to get a return on your investment. With email marketing, you’ll be waiting much less to get the results from our work.
Does this explanation help you decide? If so, please share with your friends and network. We’ll appreciate that. 😍