I bet you’ve watched countless videos on YouTube, with the disclaimer, “Don’t Try This At Home”, broadcasting the stunts of mindless individuals thinking they can pull off an idiotic stunt and land smoothly without a hitch or causing numerous unknown injuries or pain. I bet you also get in a laugh, shriek and cringe, all at the same time, at the end as you watch them crash and fail, time and time again. Sometimes, it’s hard to admit when we can’t do something on our own that lies outside our area of expertise. Well, let me rephrase that. It’s not that it’s difficult to do something new from start to finish by ourselves – it’s a matter of completing it successfully that’s the issue. Understanding all of the facets and variables of taking on a new project is a must, when trying to complete the task successfully.
This leads me to the topic of small business owners who attempt to take on the responsibility of email marketing solely by themselves. Worse, they leave this responsibility to their secretary or receptionist who has no clue what they are doing, besides the fact that they are being constantly distracted by answering phones and attending to clerical duties that email marketing gets placed on the back burner.
Gathering collateral for an email creative and purchasing the software to send your message to the masses might not seem too difficult to tackle on one’s spare time. Also, when you consider the initial cost-savings involved in doing it yourself, your return on investment (ROI) will skyrocket, right? Think again.
Whether we are small business owners or receptionists, we are all busy. When you think about it, we make a ton of decisions during the span of one day. We are all overworked, tired, distracted, and overwhelmed. With limited time and patience, each step in the email marketing process is not given enough attention to culminate in a revenue-generating campaign. In addition, newcomers to email marketing are not familiar with the complex issues that arise in the midst of the process. When design and coding issues, CAN SPAM regulations, and barriers to deliverability come into play, we realize that effective email marketing is not a walk in the park. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water and undermining the benefits of email marketing, partner with a professional email marketing agency that specializes in strategic planning, email creative build & design, email distribution, inbox deliverability, and real-time tracking and reporting.
What are the benefits of managed email marketing with a professional agency?
1. Allow an agency to handle every aspect of your email campaign, from conception to execution. Depending upon which agency you choose to go with, a reputable one will typically have an open door policy and welcome any questions or advice at each stage of the email marketing process.
2. Be confident that your email data is cleaned and validated prior to email distribution. Just because you own a massive list doesn’t necessarily mean you need to send to each and every recipient. Smart marketers know that one bad apple can ruin the whole batch. Due to this fact, they will seek out an email validation company to strip out all of the outdated, invalid, and abandoned contacts on their list to secure their sender reputation.
3. Configuring and testing your email creative so that it is rendered correctly and appears properly in all email clients. Just as websites can look skewed in select browsers, emails can look entirely different across all email clients (Yahoo, Outlook, Hotmail, AOL, etc.). It often requires testing the email to as many email accounts as possible to ensure that your clients are receiving what you think they are receiving.
4. Utilize the expertise of skilled email marketers and technology administrators to manage deliverability, monitor unsubscribes, and maximize open, click and conversion rates. Experts in the field will employ email best practices and use the appropriate production resources at their disposal to ensure that your campaign goes off without a hitch. When continual progress lies at the forefront of success, email marketing managers will make slight tweaks to improve inbox deliverability and overall campaign performance.
Outsourcing your email marketing to a specialized agency gives business owners the time and flexibility to manage the daily tasks of running a business while simultaneously leveraging the power of a large-scale email marketing campaign. Still debating whether or not to outsource your email marketing? To Outsource or Not to Outsource? That is the Question.
Whether you are in need of an agency to re-vamp and re-define a new marketing strategy or to simply augment your existing one, it pays to have a helping hand. Email marketing has potential to generate large returns, but only when it is left to the experts and done correctly.
Email Answers provides managed email marketing solutions driven not only by knowledge and reasoning, but also by creativity and intuition. We deliver results, one inbox at a time.