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How to Choose The Right Email Marketing Agency

Dec 4, 2020 | Seo

Nothing converts like email.

Email beats all other marketing channels and can generate $37 for every $1 you invest.

Even though email marketing can generate a ton of revenue, it’s still not easy.

You need to know which email tools are best, how to use them so you don’t end up in spam folders, and how to create emails that convert.

Even for fully-staffed marketing teams, it can be overwhelming.

Email marketing agencies are perfect for overcoming these challenges.

They know how to use the tools and run fully-scaled email campaigns. They can also distill your brand and offer into great campaigns that generate revenue.

Today, I’ll walk you through how to choose an email marketing agency that’ll help you unlock all the business value email holds.

Good?

Well, let’s start from the basics.

Know Your Goals and Desired Outcomes

Before you jump straight to the top email marketing companies and pick one to work with, it’s a good idea to pause first.

Why?

You’ll get much better results.

Famous email agencies, like the ones I’ll recommend, usually have a track record of overseeing successful email marketing strategies and campaigns.

However, it’s never a one-size-fits-all situation.

Some agencies only excel when working on specific projects or campaigns. Others drive better results when working with specific kinds of businesses.

Knowing your goals and desired outcomes with email marketing gives you the right lens to evaluate different agencies and know which one is best for your needs.

Not to mention, it’ll help your agency get started a lot faster. The clearer the goal, the better the outcome.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

Example #1: Build and grow your email list

Without an email list, you can’t do email marketing.

And if you have a small list of, say, 33 email addresses, you’ll never get the full benefits of email marketing either.

The first step is to build your email list.

You’ll achieve this by choosing an agency with experience executing list-building campaigns to get your first 100, 1,000, or 10,000 email subscribers.

Take yourself, for example.

You won’t give a company your email address for nothing, right?

Absolutely not! We all get enough spam as it is.

Similarly, most people would only subscribe to your email list in exchange for something valuable.

In the digital marketing world, this could be an ebook, a checklist, or other forms of relevant content promoted to the audience whose emails you’re targeting. Consider choosing an email marketing agency with experience creating and promoting amazing content. The better the content, the faster your list will grow.

Example #2: Increase your email open and click-through rates

Low open and click-through rates will destroy your list.

If your open and click-through rates are low, you’ll run into a cascading series of problems:

Your audience isn’t seeing your offers. That’s less revenue.
Email service providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo will notice your low performance. Then they’ll flag you as spam or stop delivering your email altogether.
Now your open and click rates get even worse.
Even if you improve your campaigns later, they won’t deliver nearly the same results.
Improving your email reputation is REALLY hard.

Instead of risking this email cycle of doom, it’s a good idea to partner with an agency that knows what they’re doing.

They can look for early signs that something’s wrong, course-correct early, and keep your email reputation safe.

In this case, look for an email marketing agency that is exceptional at developing strategies and tactics to help increase your open and click-through rates.

The two examples above were to show that your goals and desired outcome with email marketing go a long way in determining what agency to choose.

They were also to demonstrate that no agency is a one-size-fits-all for all email marketing problems.

Set your goals first, then look for an agency that specializes in those goals.

6 Characteristics That Make a Great Email Marketing Agency

There are hundreds of email agencies out there. Maybe thousands.

And if you visit the websites of these agencies, every single one claims to be the best.

But what characteristics make an email marketing company great? And how can you vet and choose an agency to work with?

1. Great Content Creation

Think of all the emails you receive from other companies.

Do you know why you can’t wait to open and engage with some, but would ignore, delete, or unsubscribe from others right off the bat?

In most cases, it’s because you don’t value the content of those emails.

Amazing content keeps people opening and reading. Then when you send an offer, they’re willing to consider it.

Great content is the core of any serious email strategy.

Check to see if they focus on a process for crafting engaging email content. The best ones always do.

2. An Impressive Client Portfolio

Excellent email marketing agencies didn’t achieve that status overnight.

They worked with dozens or hundreds of brands to execute successful email campaigns.

Because of this, they should have plenty of top-tier brands in their portfolio. And case studies that show you exactly what was done.

Not all of this can be shared publicly. But when you’re exploring options with agencies, ask for examples during your initial calls. The agency should have plenty of examples to point to. If they struggle to come up with some, look elsewhere.

It’s a great way to quickly vet agencies of all types.

3. Thought Leadership

Exceptional email marketing agencies are always on top of email trends. It’s constantly evolving and you don’t want to work with someone that’s using tactics from 5 years ago.

An easy way to check for this is the agency’s blog, YouTube channel, or their own email list. Within 20-30 minutes of consuming their content, you should learn a ton. And it should all be cutting edge.

That’s a good sign they’ll be able to apply those same tactics to your email campaigns.

4. Deep Expertise with Email Tools

Great agencies will have used them all.

If you ask them which tools are best, you’ll quickly learn:

Which are most popular
Strengths and weaknesses of each
The handful of tools to avoid

But don’t worry about which tool they recommend. Pay attention to their depth of knowledge when speaking with them. They’ll probably start by recommending a single tool. Then as soon as you ask any follow up questions, they should have plenty of qualifications, nuance, and detail to their answers.

You should get the feeling that the agency knows this stuff cold. If not, find someone that does.

5. Has Specific Rules to Avoid Spam

If you’ve been hit hard by spam flags, you might need an agency that specializes exclusively on reviving domains with negative email reputations.

Most of us don’t need to go that far.

But you absolutely want to work with an agency that knows how to stay out of the spam box.

Also ask new agencies about how they stay out of spam, their processes to keep things clean, and early warnings that they like to look for.

You should be blown away with the thoroughness of their answers.

If not, keep looking.

6. A Great Company Culture

By choosing an email marketing agency to work with, you’re entering a business relationship with another business entity.

So, before you proceed, check that their company culture fits with yours.

Without a good fit on culture, you’re going to get email campaigns that don’t jive with your brand. You could anger your audience and turn them away. Or play things too safe and leave money on the table.

There’s no right answer on culture, just make sure their culture and yours fit well.

Ask for samples of recent campaigns that they’ve done. They’re likely to do similar work for you.

How to Work With an Email Marketing Agency

Working with an exceptional email marketing agency isn’t like dashing into a grocery store, filling your cart, and dashing out in a few minutes.

There are steps you’ll need to take that ensure your partnership with one leads to business growth via email marketing.

1. Align your in-house team

Most email marketing agencies won’t work in isolation but as an extension of your in-house digital marketing team.

Hence, to ensure a smooth partnership between you and them, you should:

Have meetings with stakeholders in your company to align relevant teams on the need to work with an email agency.
Communicate how the agency’s work would impact your business and why it is necessary.
As needed, appoint employees to work directly with the email marketing agency.

Doing this ensures team alignment between the agency and your company. Also, it keeps the agency in sync with your values, company culture, and the goals for choosing to work with them.

2. Discovery session

As you first go out to contact an email marketing agency, they won’t jump straight into sending you a proposal or contract.

The best email marketing agencies act like doctors who only prescribe after they diagnose.

And to start diagnosing your challenges and goals with email marketing, expect to fill an inquiry form, followed by a discovery session.

3. Research & strategic recommendations

Before making a specific proposal, any good email marketing agency will do an extensive round of research on your current campaigns. This will include things like:

Signing up for your lists and looking at your current campaigns
Mapping out your signup flows
Checking landing pages and signup offers
Looking through social profiles and email funnels from other channels

Once they have a complete picture of where you are today, they’ll be able to put a proposal together.

4. A working contract with project deliverables

A typical work duration with an email marketing agency spans several months.

To take on that kind of scope,agencies usually prefer to send a formal proposal and contract for you to sign.

Take your time and this stage and go through the proposal in detail. You should feel great about every piece. If you have any concerns, work through them now. It’s really easy to change scope, budget, or goals now.

Once you fee good about it, get the contract signed.

5. Onboarding

Expect an onboarding process customized for your team after you sign the contract.

During this step, the agency will usually ask for all your internal document and tool access. Expert to send them invites for your Google Analytics and email tools. Also put together every piece of internal documentation that you have on your email campaigns. The more info they have, the better.

From here, the agency will get started on the work and should have regular check-in calls along the way.

How to Find The Right Email Marketing Agency For You

To choose an email marketing agency that’s right for your needs, the steps I recommend are:

Be sure about your business goals and desired outcomes from email marketing.
Consider agencies with the characteristics above.
Choose an agency with expertise in the area you need help with. And where possible, also prioritize those that have worked with reputable brands.
Finally, know that email is part of your digital, and by extension, content marketing strategy. Hence, it’s best to choose a company with bandwidth for those.

To help, we reviewed hundreds of agencies and found these to be the best.

The 5 Top Email Marketing Agencies

#1 Neil Patel Digital – Best For Email Content

Every time you send an email, people unsubscribe.

That hurts the long-term prospects of your email list.

Since every email has a real cost and makes your list smaller, it’s best to make them count.

The best way to do this is with great content. Your unsubscribes will be lower, your list will be more engaged, and you’ll generate more revenue in the long-run.

Content, including email content, is one of the core areas of expertise at my agency, Neil Patel Digital.

#2. InboxArmy – Best for Full-service Email Management

InboxArmy comes highly recommended, as a full-service email marketing and management company.

This agency’s services include email strategy development, template design, email automation, and other.

InboxArmyserves companies such as Airbnb, LandCentral, and Jockey. If you’re looking for serious email pros for your B2C company, I’d reach out to them.

#3 Fix My Churn – Best for SaaS Onboarding Emails and churn

Fix My Churn works with SaaS companies.

User onboarding emails are a very unique skill set. The content, CTAs, sending logic and tools are completely different. If you want to improve your SaaS emails, you really need experts in this area.

Fix My Churn applies top-level SaaS copywriting skills to create email onboarding and churn-eliminating sequences to turn free and trial users into happy, long-term customers.

Led by its Founder and SaaS email expert, Val Geisler, Fix My Churn has earned a reputation as an email marketing agency for SaaS companies like Buffer, Aweber, Podia, InVision, and others.

I’d also consider them if your have any type of subscription offer.

#4 Action Rocket – Best for Enterprise Email

Action Rocket needs no introduction as an email marketing agency for enterprise companies.

This agency even works with leading email software companies like Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, Litmus, and others to shape the email marketing space.

Using its vast years of experience, Action Rocket strategizes and develops custom email and CRM programs for enterprise companies, including Marks & Spencer, the BBC, and others.

If you want serious muscle behind your email strategy, reach out to them.

#5 SmartMail – Best for Ecommerce Email

SmarMail is our recommended email marketing agency for ecommerce businesses.

Every business model has its own unique challenges with email and ecommerce is no exception.

You need cart abandonment emails, promotional emails, lifescycle emails for repurchases, and receipts with guaranteed email deliverability.

This agency excels at helping online stores acquire, convert, and retain customers by strategizing and launching email marketing campaigns based on automated triggers across buyers’ lifetime cycle:

SmartMail has an excellent track record, helping ecommerce companies generate about $187 million in revenues. Their clients include French Connection, Skechers, and others.

Get Email Right to Drive Growth

Email marketing isn’t going anytime soon. It is here to stay.

And it generates a ton of cash. Choosing the right agency will get you that growth a lot sooner.

Set your goals, then start looking for the right agency for you.

Even if you plan on doing email inhouse, the right agency can get everything set up correctly from the beginning. That will save your team a ton of time and prevent disastrous mistakes like getting all your emails stuck in the spam folder.

How to Start a Graphic Design and Marketing Agency Online

Oct 7, 2020 | Animation, Digital Marketing

Starting a graphic design agency is a big undertaking. It requires a lot of planning, resources, and money. But, like anything else online, there are also hundreds of opportunities that you can cash in on if you have a good strategy.

Graphic design is in high demand. If you have the talents to create original graphics or designs, you can be involved in a wide variety of industries such as web design, graphic arts design, and even interior design. Graphic design is needed in a variety of contexts and people are often willing to pay well for this uniquely creative skill.

In this post, we will talk about the advantages of starting your design agency, as well as some of the resources and tips you may want to tap into to get your design company started.

Why Start a Design Agency?

If you have talent in graphics or artistic design, you can tap into a lucrative opportunity through graphic design advertising. Many different types of people need professional designs today for their websites, logos, and other digital assets. The original design is important for branding, and many companies will pay you well for creating these graphics and other designs for them.

Other advantages in setting up your own top creative agency are that you will have an opportunity to establish yourself as a digital artist that can create some different items that you can sell online.

Some websites and platforms allow you to sell your digital assets online such as Digital Point and iStockphoto. These royalty-free image platforms can help you to create a sales platform that also allows you to sell premade designs. This can add to your revenue streams and help provide extra cash flow while you are building your business. It will also help you to establish yourself as a graphic design artist and promote your business on other platforms.

How to Start a Graphic Design agency

Once you decide to create your design agency or marketing solutions agency, there are some specific steps that you should take before you get started. As with any new business venture, you should do your research and your homework before you start launching your business. It’s best to make mistakes in the process of starting your company rather than make them with a client’s work. This can hurt your reputation if you are trying to promote yourself as a high-quality graphic designer. So make the worst mistakes in the early stages of developing your business and avoid the big mistakes once you get customers.

The following steps should serve to get you started with your design agency so that you can work on improving your technique and growing your business.

1. First, assess the tools and resources that you have already. Consider your talents as a part of your resources. Everything you can bring to your business will help define what it becomes in the future. The tools you use can include graphic design tools, online resources, and images that you will use in your designs. It’s a good idea to collect your graphics and images ahead of time so that you will have everything you need before you get started. However, you will always want to look for other tools and assets that will help you to grow your business as you get new ideas. So stay flexible to changes.

2. Think about the tools you’ll need to get started.– You need to do some research to find out what you’ll need to start and maintain your business. You may need to download a good selection of artistic design software such as Adobe PhotoShop, Canva, or other online tools. Then you’ll need to practice using them until you master the tools before you start taking clients.

3. Consider your budget. Decide how much money you need to start your business and take notice of any resources you can tap into to get the money you need. The sources of your reserve can come from a variety of sources such as bank accounts, business loans, or other sources. It’s best not to borrow any more than you have to when you are getting started with a new business. But sometimes you have to do this as you are gaining ground with your business cash flow.

4. Connect with other design experts.– One of the best things you can do when you are getting started with your design business is to connect to other well-established designers. By connecting to some of the most influential people in your industry, you’ll be able to use their power to get you more leads, while helping them out, as well. Make sure you arrange it to where the influencer also gets something out of it, such as a plug for a new eBook or a link back to their website. That way, they will want to help you more.

5. Start a website and a blog.– Your website and blog will serve as your virtual real estate that people will come to find out how they can purchase your services. You should have an online portfolio (see #7) on your website on a separate page that people can view to see the kind of work you do. Also, make sure and include your contact information on your website and your blog so people can contact you.

6. Use media such as videos and podcasts or infographics to promote your work.– People love podcasts and video. You can attract a larger number of viewers if you use media on topics that appeal to your target audience. Videos can help attract a much larger portion of your audience, especially if you address issues that matter to your customers. If you are design company owner, you may want to illustrate how you do some of your work or talk about topics in design such as 3D design techniques or other things you can share with your viewers.

Podcasts are also a good asset to add to your website, and listeners can take your podcast with them with their mobile devices. Infographics are also a great idea because they combine high-quality graphics with significant data and information. You can use infographics to promote your ideas and design services in a streamlined way.

7. Create an online portfolio.– If you do creative work in the design industry, you need to have an online portfolio that viewers can see. This will give them an idea of the kind of work you do, and they can communicate with you about what type of designs they may want. Onlne portfolios are important because they illustrate the kind of work you do. This will help you match up your services with people who are interested in your skills and who may want to hire you.

How to Create an Infographic for your Design Agency

Creating an infographic for your design company is a good idea because it can help you to promote your business to the people that are most likely to do business with you. Use samples from some of your best work to attract your clientele.

You can feature a particular sample on your main page or show a video that highlights one of your best creations, and then provide a form where people can sign up for a free estimate.

How an Infographic Can Help Get New Leads

If you are considering creating an infographic for your design business, look at some samples by professional infographic design companies first. This will give you an idea of how good infographics look. Then you can brainstorm ideas that you want to include on your infographic based on your business goals.

Link Building For Beginners: A Digital Marketing Agency’s Guide

Oct 7, 2020 | Seo

Despite a lot of discourse throughout SEO communities and digital marketing agencies alike, link building, earning, or acquisition (whatever term you are more comfortable with) is still incredibly important in SEO. In this article, we will cover some of the best link building strategies and techniques that you can employ to get ahead in your niche and climb the rankings to organic success.

Link building is considered by some to fall into the darker realms of SEO but this blog will guide you through the darkness with an illuminating white hat. Not only will you find that many of these methods are accepted by all and work extremely well, many of them can be accomplished with little or no money — but instead with your time, effort and resources.

White Hat Link Building Techniques

Link building has a long and storied past in SEO but we’ll start just before April 2012 and just before the release of Google Penguin. Prior to Penguin, businesses and digital marketing agencies could essentially buy their position on Google (and I don’t mead with Adwords) with cheap and plentiful low-quality links!

Before Penguin, Google’s ability to evaluate the quality of links was very limited and relied on more basic metrics, in comparison to the more modern link analysis methods. Without going into too much detail, quantity used to matter a lot more than it does now. Since the rollout of Penguin, website owners and digital marketing agencies have had to innovate their link building tactics to create value that earns links.

Below are some examples of link building strategies that SEOs can use to increase rankings and stay in Google’s good book:

Create Meaningful Relationships

Links are the online equivalent of an offline referral from somebody who knows a thing or two about the thing you are asking about. Just like in the offline world, relationships and communities are incredibly valuable in SEO. If you can strike up relationships with people within your given niche, the reach of your website will greatly increase, as will the likelihood of people linking to your site.

A good idea is to start a forum or group on a social media platform. If you can demonstrate value within the community you have created or joined, people will begin listening to you, and (hopefully) linking to resources or blogs on your website.

Something to keep in mind here, is that backlinks and references rarely often happen. No matter how great the content is you create, one must really put in the necessary time and effort to establish relationships, ask for links/references, and continually provide value in the process.

Nathan Elly is the branch manager of digital marketing agencies and had the following to say on the importance of creating meaningful relationships.

Everyday we work with a wide range of companies and brands that are looking to establish new relationships online, and also gain powerful backlinks in the process. Not only is this something we’ve been able to help out with, it’s something we’ve mastered and taught to many brands and companies over the years as well. Even with the enviornment changing, it’s always come down to the simple practice of direct relationships and not just expecting backlinks to come in. Start a relationship, provide value, and ask how you can help other site owners succeed. This is one of the best ways to find longterm relationships and gain high quality backlinks and references in the process.

Create Meaningful Content

Following on from point 1, you need to demonstrate value – enough value that other people and websites want to reference your work. You need to ask yourself questions like:

What is my audience interested in?
What is currently a hot topic within my niche?
Can I produce content that is evergreen?
Are there resources already being linked to that I can improve upon?

If you can answer these questions and produce content that other people value and promote it through the platforms you participate in, then you will get links! Evergreen content, or content that has a very long shelf life, can have a fantastic ROI in the long term. Content that effectively answers age-old questions can bring in a steady flow of links.

At the same time, we can always look back at some of the most obvious basics to great content writing, as provided by Yoast. Yes, these are basic, but so many websites, brands, and bloggers still neglect to follow many of these rules.

Think before you write.
Write down the structure of your blog post.
Use paragraphs, headings, and signal words.

There are a few more recommendations from Yoast, but most of these are covered within their Yoast SEO plugin when you scroll down to the bottom of any content you are writing within WordPress.

These are basic, but spending a few extra minutes to implement these into your writing can result in a much higher-quality end result. I personally have started using the “structure” tip with my writing, and thrown in ‘audio to text’, then will clean my content up afterward. With all of this in place, it definitely makes writing 2,000+ word articles much easier and faster.

Resource Page Links

Some websites have a page dedicated to linking out to valuable resources within their niche. Instead of sharing your content within your communities and hoping these webmasters see your engagement, you can actively seek them out! Google’s search engine allows for specific inputs to retrieve certain results. Using the below search strings, you can discover resources pages in your niche!:

“Keyword” + inurl:links
“Keyword” + “helpful resources”
“Keyword” + “useful resources”
“Keyword” + “useful links”

Once you have shortlisted the websites you feel you could add value to and vice versa – reach out to them with an email or phone pitch promoting your content. Hopefully, you and your content are persuasive and valuable enough that they create a new link to your content, or replace an old link with your new improved resource.

I get these emails all the time from random people and they are quite annoying — almost as much as the 50+ guest blogging requests I get daily as well. However, on the internet, it’s all a numbers game and if only 10% of the sites respond and end up linking back to your site, it’s a working strategy. If you are looking for more link building options like this one and want to put in the manual outreach, investing some time into 404 broken link building as well.

Business Directories

Business directories can be an extremely valuable link building resource for businesses, particularly for those competing in a local market. In a lot of cases, business directories are quite authoritative which is then passed back to your website. They also have the added benefit of allowing local businesses to list their business details like Name, Address and Phone Number.

In the SEO world, we call these NAP details. Having consistent NAP details across all of your online web assets (website, directories, Google My Business, etc…) is a strong ranking signal for Google in local markets. When you are creating listings on these directories, be diligent with your inputs and make sure everything is consistent.

To identify useful directories for your business, we can use some more search strings (yay) and Google. Below are some you can take advantage of:

“industry” inurl:directory
“industry” inurl:links
“industry” intitle:directory
intitle:industry inurl:directory
related:industry inurl:directory

If you are a local business or have a physical location, you should definitely spend some time on your Google My Business listing. With nearly all searches being made through Google, it’s important to make sure your site or business information is showing up correctly in Google — especially if it’s for a local address, operating hours, or getting in touch with your brand.

Conclusion

So, there you have it; our beginners guide to white hat link building for digital marketing agencies! These four tips will certainly be a good start for your burgeoning business and put you on the right track for sustainable rankings. This is by no means an exhaustive list but it does highlight some of the more accessible ways a business can begin expanding its organic reach through the means of link building.