Question 1

What is an email marketing agency?

Accepted Answer

An email marketing agency creates tailored email campaigns to engage customers, aiming to foster relationships, improve brand loyalty, and drive conversions. Its expertise lies in understanding customer behavior, preferences, and triggers, which they use to build meaningful connections.

Question 2

What does an email marketing company do?

Accepted Answer

An email marketing company uses email as a channel to promote brands, their products, and/or services.

Their job is to send targeted email messages to prospects and customers to boost sales, attain brand loyalty, and increase returning customers. They can also track user interactions and refine their strategies based on real-time feedback, ensuring that the content they create continuously meets the needs and preferences of their audience.

Their primary objective is to optimize email communication for maximum impact and return on investment (ROI). To achieve clients’ goals, email marketing companies:

Employ personalized content and timely triggers
Ensure emails are engaging, responsive, and look great on all devices
Stay current on email marketing trends and best practices

Some types of email content an email marketer can create include:

Welcome email series
Email blasts
Newsletters
Seasonal promotions
Post-purchase drips
Connect-via-social campaigns
Abandoned cart emails
Win-back campaigns
And more

Question 3

What is the main purpose of email marketing?

Accepted Answer

The primary purpose of email marketing is to establish and maintain meaningful connections with your audience, drive desired actions or conversions, and contribute to your business's overall growth and success.

Effective email marketing allows companies to deliver personalized, timely, and relevant messages that resonate with subscribers, ultimately leading to increased customer engagement, loyalty, and revenue. As a direct line of communication, email marketing enables businesses to inform their audience about new products, offers, or company updates.

This case study from SmartSites demonstrates how strategic email marketing can produce results that other digital marketing channels can’t. Virtual real estate brokerage eRealty Advisors wanted to engage more real estate agents to join its membership program.

SmartSites sent out monthly newsletters and email campaigns via MailChimp and automated email flows for new subscribers and leads. These and other efforts increased the conversion rate by a whopping 480% and leads by 360%.

Question 4

How do email campaigns work?

Accepted Answer

Email campaigns work by sending targeted emails to a specific target audience. These emails can promote products or services, share news, or provide information.

The process goes as follows:

Marketers collect email addresses, often through website sign-ups or other lead-generation tactics.
Leads are segmented by engagement, location, or other strategies.
Email marketing companies then create and send targeted emails for each segment and send them out at strategic times.
They then measure the success of email marketing campaigns by monitoring open rates, click-throughs, and conversions.

Question 5

What services does an email marketing company provide?

Accepted Answer

An email marketing company provides the following main services:

Email audit: The first step before developing a strategy, audits provide agencies with a clear picture of what the client does well, their challenges, and potential opportunities. Understanding past creative directions and distribution strategies is key to planning future improvements.
Email strategy: During the strategic planning, email marketing agencies conduct audience research to pinpoint the most effective messaging, offers, and timing for the target market. This later informs decisions on which automation opportunities, subscriber acquisition methods, and basic best practices (e.g., double opt-in, receipts/invoices, transactional emails) to adopt.
Email template development: These specialized agencies design and develop templates for organizations that don’t have the in-house expertise and resources to do it on their own. These templates can be reused in a variety of scenarios by swapping out text, images, and links.
Custom creatives: If a template doesn't meet your needs, custom creatives might. These may include a combination of content, design, and development.
Email campaign management: This includes full-service campaign execution and management, whether on an ongoing basis or for a one-time campaign.
Performance tracking: Tracking and analyzing key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, conversions, spam complaints, and engagement can contribute to continued business success.

Other services email marketing companies provide are:

Email list management and segmentation
Automation and workflow setup
A/B testing and optimization
Performance tracking and analytics
Compliance and deliverability
Third-party integrations with email platforms

Question 6

What’s the difference between email marketing vs. marketing automation?

Accepted Answer

The main difference between email marketing and email automation is that the former covers a broader range of activities and monitors the direct actions users take on your emails, while the latter automates tedious tasks related to email marketing like collecting essential data from a wide variety of touchpoints.

Email marketing is a digital marketing channel that focuses on creating email campaigns to help brands connect with their target audiences. This includes:

Analyzing market research
Writing and designing email content
Scheduling and sending emails

Marketing automation refers to the use of specialized software to streamline repetitive marketing tasks on various channels, including social media, websites, and email marketing. Some of the most commonly automated email tasks include:

Gathering comprehensive data on customer demographics and behavior
Segmenting the market
Customizing content and sending emails based on time or activity-based triggers
Monitoring profit across the email journey

Question 7

What are the types of email marketing?

Accepted Answer

There are two primary types of email marketing: inbound email marketing and outbound email marketing.

1. Inbound email marketing

Inbound email marketing targets your existing customers throughout their customer journey. Its goal is to improve brand awareness, engagement, and customer loyalty as well as highlight new offerings.

The inbound email marketing can be further categorized into:

Welcome emails
Transactional emails
Promotional emails
Abandoned cart emails
Re-engagement emails
Survey emails
Recap emails
Product update emails
Email newsletters

2. Outbound email marketing

Outbound email marketing targets a broader audience (i.e., people not on your email list). Its main objectives are to boost brand recognition and attract new customers to your brand, products, or services.

The types of emails under this category are:

Cold emails
Follow-up emails

Question 8

How much do companies charge for email marketing?

Accepted Answer

Generally, email marketing companies charge $100 to $200 per hour, with average monthly expenses reaching $2,500. The top 50 email marketing agencies on DesignRush charge an average of $103/hour.

About 95% of agencies operate on a retainer basis. For businesses working with these agencies for the first time, contract values can range between $5,000 and $49,000. Roughly 14.5% of the email marketing agencies on DesignRush accept projects with a minimum budget of $1,000, while only 1.2% have a $50,000+ minimum budget.

Here's a breakdown of email marketing agency costs by services:

Services	Inclusions	Average costs
Content creation	Email writing, blog posts, image sourcing, email design	$500/month
Strategy development	Market research, planning, tactical design	$75 - $275/hour
Technical services	Vendor selection, deliverability checks, data integration	$95 - $300/hour
Analytics	Campaign tracking, custom reporting, segmentation analysis	$750/month

The final cost of email marketing services varies depending on the type of services, project complexity, company stature, and size.

Question 9

Why should I hire a trusted email marketing agency?

Accepted Answer

You should hire a trusted email marketing agency for the following reasons:

High ROI: Email is the most important marketing channel for businesses because of its ROI. For every $1 spent, it generates an average return of $42 – making it even more budget-friendly than social advertising or display advertising.
Overcome common challenges: Email marketing agencies address typical issues such as limited resources (40%), lack of data (30%), strategy (25%), outdated processes (22%), and content creation (20%).
Growing email usage: Email users are projected to reach 4.48 billion by 2024, and agencies can help tap into this expanding audience effectively.
Expertise in engagement: Professional agencies understand how to combat declining open rates, which averaged 22.1% in 2019 – an 8% drop from 2018.
Effective subject lines: Agencies excel in crafting compelling subject lines, which is essential as 64% of recipients base their decision to open an email on the subject line.
Improved metrics: Agencies are skilled in boosting open rates, click-through rates, and overall conversions. Many focus on ways to personalize your emails, which leads to 50% higher open rates.
Adaptation to trends: They stay abreast of evolving email marketing trends and technologies to create more effective email campaigns.

Here’s a case study that demonstrates how effective an email marketing agency can be. Coldie Holdie struggled with low organic website traffic and ineffective customer retention despite a strong product range and initial success in PPC campaigns. Its marketing efforts were held back by poor SEO, underutilized email marketing, and frequent product suspensions on Google.

SmartSites implemented a robust SEO and email marketing strategy, focusing on link building, automated email sequences, and a unified omnichannel approach. This strategy led to a remarkable 1,162% increase in email traffic and a 485% boost in email revenue.

Question 10

How do I choose an email marketing company?

Accepted Answer

To choose the best email marketing company, follow these steps:

Define your email marketing objectives, whether it's boosting subscriber engagement, driving sales, or nurturing leads. Establish a budget, key performance indicators (KPIs), and a timeline for your campaigns.
Seek out agencies with a track record in your specific industry, using online directories like DesignRush and agency websites to identify which have the expertise that aligns with your specific needs.
Evaluate client testimonials and delve into case studies to gauge the agency's efficiency, capabilities, strategic approach, and problem-solving skills.
Look for a proficient email marketing agency with a team of skilled strategists, content creators, copywriters, graphic designers, data analysts, digital marketers, and project managers.
Give priority to agencies renowned for their exceptional deliverability rates. They should excel in list hygiene, sender reputation management, email authentication, and compliance with internet privacy regulations.
Choose an agency with a strategic approach that prioritizes research, audience insights, brand understanding, and measurable goals.
Ensure the agency regularly conducts A/B testing to optimize subject lines, CTAs, and segmentation for improved campaign outcomes.
Ensure the agency strictly adheres to data privacy laws (e.g., GDPR) and responsibly collects and safeguards customer data.
Match the agency's pricing structure to your budget. The agency should be transparent about costs and offer packages tailored to your unique requirements.
Shortlist potential email marketing firms and submit a comprehensive email marketing request for proposal (RFP) to solicit detailed quotes. This lets you thoroughly compare their expertise, methodologies, and pricing.
Arrange meetings with the most promising candidates and select the one that most comprehensively fulfills your criteria.

If you need help finding the right email marketing service provider for your business, let us know about your project, and our team will provide a list of suitable agencies. Check out the Marketplace for more details.

Question 11

What questions do I ask when hiring an email marketing company?

Accepted Answer

The key questions to ask a potential email marketing partner include:

Its Relevant Background

How deep is your email marketing expertise within our industry?
What are some case studies or examples of successful email campaigns you've executed and the results they achieved?
Can you provide references from past clients for email marketing projects?
What is the size of your team specializing in email marketing? How long has your company been offering these services?

Company Services and Processes

How do you balance increased workloads with quality and timeliness?
What is your process from conceptualizing an email campaign to execution and analysis?
What email marketing and automation platforms, tools, and technologies do you primarily use for email marketing campaigns, and why?
How do you ensure data privacy and compliance with regulations like GDPR in your email campaigns?
What post-campaign services do you provide, like analytics and performance reports?
How do you manage scalability for growing email lists and evolving campaign needs?
Besides email marketing, what other digital marketing services do you offer?

The Project

Do you handle our email campaign in-house, or do you outsource some of its aspects? If yes, which ones?
Are your email marketing campaigns fully customized or based on templates?
Can you integrate your campaigns with our existing CRM or other third-party tools?
Can we review and modify email content or designs before sending them?
How much involvement will our team have in the campaign process? What input will you need from us?
What measurable results can we expect from our collaboration in terms of engagement and open, click-through, conversion, and delivery rates? How do you monitor these metrics?
How often will you send campaign performance reports?
What are the costs associated with an email marketing campaign of our scope? How do you structure your fees?

These questions will help you understand a potential email marketing partner's expertise, approach, and alignment with your specific campaign goals and needs.

Question 12

What are the best email marketing agencies in the U.S.?

Accepted Answer

The best email marketing agencies in the U.S. are:

Agency name	DesignRush rating	Google rating	Top clients
SmartSites	5.0 (52 reviews)	4.9 (460 reviews)	Rolls-Royce Classic Audi Poker Stars Rakuten
Evestar	4.9 (20 reviews)	5.0 (11 reviews)	Steve Madden Noli Yoga Anatomie Health Fitness Longevity
Ignite Visibility	4.9 (14 reviews)	4.5 (56 reviews)	Tony Robbins Mobile Mini Solutions Vallarta Adventures DrivenBrands
HigherVisibility	4.9 (19 reviews)	4.4 (132 reviews)	eBay Warner Bros BBQ Guys Ziebart
LinkGraph	4.9 (33 reviews)	4.7 (12 reviews)	International Olympic Committee Serena&Lily P&G University of Cincinnati

Scroll up to discover more about the top email marketing agencies selected for their successful projects, industry standing, customer feedback, and team expertise. To tailor your search even more, filter these companies by location, budget, hourly rates, and client reviews.

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