($244.44k In 24 Hours in my Klaviyo account)
If you have read any of my blog posts, you know how much I love email marketing. It is a core part of my e-commerce brand's success and profit. As an e-commerce founder, I want to help you hire the best ecommerce email marketing agency from the start.
Nothing is more frustrating than hiring a new email marketing agency, waiting for weeks to get started, and being stuck in a contract. Not to mention, when you do get results they aren't what you had hoped.
3 Steps to take before you hire an email marketing agency
Most online stores are already doing email marketing and getting some results. Do these 3 things before you talk to any email marketing services companies or experts.
Step 1 - Understanding your current email marketing performance
If you don't know where you are at, how will you know if the email marketing agency is performing well or not?
Step 2 - Be clear on your communication expectations
This will help an email marketing agency determine if they can actually hit your goals. A great one will be transparent and tell you if they can't help you as well.
Step 3 - Have a clear email strategy that you can explain easily to your email marketing agency
Most agencies will help craft your overall strategy, but having your own will help them understand your position in the market better.
Decide what email marketing services you want to outsource (Email automation, Email marketing campaigns, Email Design, etc.)
It is really easy to overcomplicate and obsess over details that have no impact on your email marketing campaign's success. Being clear on what email marketing services you may want for your online store is important.
It is most common to hire an email marketing agency to do it all and typically removes any bottlenecks between your brand and getting emails sent out.
When I stopped micromanaging my email marketing agency and let them just run with it, I was able to get my time back to work on other things in my business. It was a true sense of freedom.
Delegating my email campaigns to a marketing agency was one of the biggest time savers and had amazing ROI.
Do you have a real email marketing strategy?
Regardless if you decide to hire email marketing experts or you decide to keep email in-house, having a real email marketing strategy is key to profit.
For my own brand, we never really had a high-level strategy that we could refer to for crafting email campaigns or email automation.
Taking the time to define your email marketing strategy makes the day-to-day tasks of designing and building emails much easier and faster.
Do this one thing before you hire an email expert
A free consultation is a good first step to understanding what the agency may be like to work with. But the best way to do is to test them before hiring them.
Do this first! Give the email agency you are vetting access to your Email Service Provider. Ask them to perform an audit of your account. In the audit ask them to show you exactly what they would do to improve performance and manage the account.
This will give you a true perspective on what they will do before you sign a long-term contract.
Even if you decide you don't want to work with them, you will have an email marketing strategy for your ecommerce company.
Delegate the management of the agency to an employee
In my own eCommerce company, the best decision I ever made was delegating to my team. I was able to spend time golfing and with my family because I put in the time to document my process. Taking the extra time upfront to document how you think of email and how you currently do it.
Will not only be helpful for the email marketing agency you hire, but it also will give your in house team a road map for success.
I am a huge fan of delegating and letting go. It is easier said than done, but after 10 years in the email marketing and eCommerce game I have mastered letting go. I let go so much, I actually sold my ecommerce brand this year!
Now I am semi-retired, hence why I needed something to do. That is why I launched this blog. I hope these blogs help you build your ecom brand and get your time back.
The final step when hiring an email marketing agency
Make sure you get clear deliverables from the email marketing agency. The more information you have, the less you will have to follow up. The worst part about hiring a digital marketing agency or email agency is having to follow up.
Understand the following things before hiring them:
1- Exact deliverables - How many email campaigns per month
2 - How many revisions are included
3 - What is the expected communication
4 - How far in advance do you need to provide information for product launches and the email campaign calendar
If you know what they will provide upfront, you will save mental energy by being able to clearly measure if they are hitting your targets.
Will you hire an email marketing agency for your ecommerce brand?
I have a good one for you. Just let me know and I can introduce you.