As all marketers know, when it comes to conversion rates, no digital marketing channel is more successful than email marketing.
A good email marketing campaign can help you attract prospects, inform them about your company or product, and increase lead generation.
However, developing and launching a great email marketing campaign can be complex and time-consuming. This is especially true for businesses that don’t have the bandwidth to spend hours coding, designing, and crafting a routine email marketing calendar.
This is where hiring a digital marketing consultant or agency can come in.
You don’t have to be an expert marketer to get started with email marketing campaigns.
A good agency can help you find and test the right combinations of email marketing strategies that will help increase customer loyalty, business growth, and retention levels.
But how do you know whether hiring an email marketing agency is right for you? It’s first important to understand what makes for great email marketing efforts and why these are so important.
What makes for great email marketing campaigns?
An email marketing campaign can be incredibly valuable if it’s executed in an efficient manner. After all, email converts, on average, at more than 15% making it one of the most efficient marketing channels.
A well-executed email marketing campaign engages your audience, brings them in closer, and helps them feel more connected to what your company is doing. It should make them feel like family! Because connections like these are exactly what can reach targeted customers and lead to business growth.
If you have created or implemented an email marketing strategy in the past, you’ll be able to answer the following questions.
- Do you have the right team to effectively create, and run an email marketing program?
- Does your team have the time to do so?
- Do you have the right tools (analytics, lead scoring, marketing automation, email creation) to measure the impact of an email program?
If the answer to any of these questions is “No” or you’re not sure, then it’s a good idea to start searching for an email agency to help build out your email marketing program.
Finding an email marketing agency
Finding the right agency shouldn’t be too difficult.
There are many agencies that are doing great work when it comes to email marketing.
They’re experts at creating email campaigns from scratch, coming up with email subject lines that improve click-through rates, automating email programs, combining multiple emails into drip email campaigns, coding responsive HTML email templates, and other growth services.
After all, digital marketing agencies, online marketing services, email marketing specialists, and direct marketing “gurus” have to work hard to get clients.
Competition is tough.
There are thousands of such professionals and firms across the United States. So, what’s the best way to pick the top email marketing agency or partner for you? The first step is to get clear on what you hope to get out of your email marketing strategy.
- Do you plan on implementing automated campaigns to remind customers of purchasing opportunities?
- Will you send out a newsletter with detailed monthly reports?
- Will your email templates change or will they mostly remain the same?
- Do you want your email campaigns tailored towards achieving sales?
- Or do you want your marketing efforts to serve as community engagement platforms?
You must get clear on exactly what you hope to achieve with your email marketing efforts because if not, other companies that are clear on their goals have a much higher chance of outperforming you.
If you’re not sure about any of these questions, a digital marketing consultant can usually work with you to get clear on your objectives.
However, paying someone to manage email marketing campaigns can be pricey.
So, before searching for the best email marketing agencies around you, it’s a good idea to take an honest look at your budget and assess whether digging into marketing automation companies is a better use of company time and money.
Should you use an email marketing solution instead?
One of the most difficult parts about being an online marketer is figuring out which email software is worth using and which ones you might be better off avoiding. Some will be a waste of time and money.
What’s the right email marketing platform for you?
Take Mailchimp for example. For small and medium-sized businesses it’s a solid option. It’s got simple-to-use templates and solid preview settings. But for large businesses, it’s not a good option. Mailchimp simply doesn’t work for businesses past a certain size.
Businesses like emerging growth companies with headcounts somewhere between 200-2499 can’t utilize Mailchimp. And neither can enterprises with headcounts of 2500 persons and above.
This means large businesses often have to resort to other digital marketing and email automation platforms.
The problem is that these MAPs (Mail Automation Platforms) are often difficult to use. They involve coding and designing. If you have different people on the team doing each of these, what ends up happening is that someone, inadvertently, becomes a bottleneck. This of course hinders productivity and slows down a team’s ability to accomplish business objectives.
Email creation services
If you’re not sure whether it’s the right time to hire an email marketing agency, or whether you’re looking for other options, you’ll want to consider Stensul.
Stensul is an efficient, easy-to-use email creation solution that can be easily integrated with MAPs.
Its user-friendly interface prevents bottlenecks from happening because it allows people to collaborate on the creation and approval of the email in real-time.
The templates, responsive previews, and functions are all easy to use, even by non-technical people. In fact, instead of taking days or weeks to create an email campaign, Stensul can do it in minutes reducing email creation time by 90%.
So, if you’re ready to take your email marketing to the next step be sure to consider all the above. Think through the key questions and decide whether you should spring for an email marketing company or if you should explore an email creation platform like Stensul.
