Hiring Guide: How to Choose a Leading Email Marketing Company in the US

How does an email marketing company help businesses grow?

Email is the leading channel for securing leads, nurturing them, and a close second for converting them. It is also an integral part of the entire sales process, not just the early stages of content marketing.

Statistics show that nearly 4.5 billion people worldwide used email in 2025, and this number is projected to reach over 4.8 billion by 2027. This scale is one of the main reasons email marketing companies continue to deliver strong, measurable ROI across industries.

Out of all marketing and advertising channels, email accounts for 39% of usage, making it one of the top 5 most used channels, right after social media marketing with 52%, social media ads with 47%, and search advertising and SEO accounting for 40% and 39% respectively.

According to the ZeroBounce report, 93% of people use email every day, and many say it actively improves their shopping experience. For businesses working with email marketing firms, this daily engagement creates consistent opportunities to influence purchase behavior:

• 59% of consumers say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions
• 41% of respondents check their email looking for discounts from brands
• 67% prefer that emails from brands are short
• 46% of people open an email from a company because they’ve been getting consistently good emails from that company

While having a catchy subject line is important, it’s only the second reason why people open your messages, the 2025 email marketing statistics reveal.

According to reports, 46% of people open their inbox regularly to check relevant emails, while 43% open it because of a catchy subject line.

21% said they open emails regardless of the content.

Only 14% interact with their inbox out of fear of missing out, and 7% presented other reasons for checking their emails daily.

How do agencies track the performance of an email marketing campaign?

Experienced email marketing agencies use open rate, click rate, delivery rate, unsubscribe rate, and bounce rate metrics to evaluate campaign health, engagement quality, and long-term list performance.

Open rate measures the percentage of recipients who open an email and reflects subject-line effectiveness and sender trust.

Average open rates typically range from 15% to 25%, though reliability has declined due to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection.

Best practices include personalization, keeping subject lines under 40 characters, and A/B testing.

Click-through rate (CTR) tracks engagement by measuring clicks divided by emails delivered, while click-to-open rate (CTOR) measures clicks divided by opens.

A healthy CTR is usually 2%–3%.

Personalization is crucial, as 40% of respondents report frustration with irrelevant content, and emails with visuals can increase CTR by up to 300%.

Delivery rate indicates how many emails are successfully accepted by inbox providers.

The goal for everyone is to reach a 100% deliverability rate, but that’s usually unattainable because many emails end up in spam folders that users often don’t filter through.

With an expert B2B email marketing agency, you can expect to reach a 99% deliverability rate, assuming it follows best practices.

According to the ZeroBounce survey, 78% of users mark an email as spam if the email "looks like spam".

So, even if it doesn’t immediately go to the spam folder, an email will not be considered successfully delivered when the user doesn’t get to it.

As of 2024, Gmail and Yahoo require authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) for bulk senders, making deliverability a shared responsibility between senders and ESPs.

Unsubscribe rates under 2% are considered normal, as Campaign Monitor suggests.

Segmentation, personalization, preference centers, and re-engagement campaigns for contacts who have been inactive for 6+ months help reduce churn.

Bounce rate should stay below 2% and include soft bounces (temporary issues) and hard bounces (invalid addresses).

Double opt-in, list hygiene, segmentation, and secured signup forms (e.g., reCAPTCHA) are key to maintaining list quality.

Does email marketing still work in 2025?

It's more effective than it’s been in years, according to Omnisend’s 2025 eCommerce marketing report, which shows global email open rates increased 6% year over year, reaching 26.6%, marking the fourth consecutive year of growth.

This sustained increase suggests that consumers are actively engaging with it, especially when messages are relevant and timely. This is why many brands continue to invest in trusted email marketing providers to manage performance at scale.

Click-to-conversion rates grew by 27.6%, indicating a shift in consumer behavior where people are clicking less impulsively, but when they do click, they’re far more likely to purchase.

In other words, email is attracting higher-intent, more purchase-ready traffic.

The revenue impact becomes even clearer when looking at automation.

The report found that automated emails generated 37% of all email-driven sales while accounting for just 2% of total email volume.

One in three people who clicked an automated email made a purchase, compared to one in 18 for scheduled campaigns. This highlights how modern email success is driven by strategy and timing, not sheer send volume.

Email also benefits from being a first-party channel, giving brands direct access to their audience at a time when paid media costs are rising, and third-party data is becoming less reliable.

With growing engagement, stronger conversion efficiency, and unmatched ownership of customer relationships, email remains one of the most reliable and scalable marketing channels in 2025, especially when paired with automation and lifecycle targeting.

How do I find an email marketing agency on DesignRush that fits my budget?

We have created a list of agencies for you to choose from based on the three different budget ranges they’re offering:

Beyond the project budget, our agency directory lets you filter agency profiles by area of expertise, location, agency reviews, client types, and team size.

What red flags should I avoid when selecting a company in the USA?

Look out for the following red flags when you start your selection process:

• Unrealistic guarantees
• Prioritizing vanity metrics
• Questionable list practices and shared sending reputation
• Weak deliverability discipline (e.g., IP warmup, list hygiene)
• Thin analytics and reporting
• Generic content and designs with no research or quality assurance
• Compliance and security gaps
• Lackluster email portfolio and poor execution signals
• Unclear governance, ownership, and contract
• Client reviews highlight poor communication, project management, and customer service

What important questions should I ask before signing a contract?

We suggest you ask an email marketing agency the following questions:

Relevant Background

1. What experience do you have managing email programs for companies similar to ours in size, industry, or market?
2. Can you share case studies with measurable results (open rates, CTR, conversions, revenue)?
3. Who will be directly responsible for our account, and what is their experience in email strategy and deliverability?
4. How do you stay current with email regulations, deliverability best practices, and platform updates in the US?

Services and Processes

1. Which services are included in your contract (strategy, copy, design, automation, testing, deliverability, reporting)?
2. What is your end-to-end process for planning, building, approving, and sending campaigns?
3. How do you enforce email marketing compliance requirements across your campaigns?
4. How do you handle revisions, feedback cycles, and turnaround times?
5. What tools and platforms do you use (ESP, analytics, QA, testing, deliverability monitoring)?

Relevant to Your Project

1. How will you tailor our email strategy to our goals, audience, and budget?
2. Which KPIs will define success for our engagement, and how will you report on them?
3. What timeline should we expect before seeing meaningful performance improvements?
4. What risks do you foresee (deliverability, list quality, resource constraints), and how will you mitigate them?

Sources

DesignRush sustains a directory of over 40,000 agencies categorized by service category, location, expertise, and reviews. We build our database in two ways:

• Our dedicated team of agency experts actively searches the web for top-performing companies. We then pull information from their websites, online presence, and client testimonials to verify their status and qualifications prior to listing.
• The agencies listed get notified of their profiles on the website and they can choose to claim it or not, which suggests their availability for more collaborations.

Agencies can also reach out to DesignRush and must go through the verification process prior to being listed.