Email marketing is a highly effective way to drive conversions for your e-commerce business. With a 2.8% conversion rate for B2C brands, it’s one of the best channels for winning over potential customers and securing repeat business from existing ones.
But setting up a punchy email campaign is no mean feat. It takes considerable time, expertise, and resources – something many small businesses are short on. The solution? Outsourcing email marketing efforts.
Here, we’ll explore everything you need to know about outsourcing email campaigns, from potential challenges to choosing a service provider that’s the right fit for you.
What is email marketing outsourcing?
Email marketing outsourcing sees companies hire the services of an external team who produce your email marketing campaigns and manage related tasks.
Big e-commerce businesses will likely have an internal team that handles all marketing campaigns, including email. But for smaller businesses, working with a third-party email marketing service can be just as effective.
Specialist external teams have access to advanced tools, resources, and expertise to improve the performance of your campaigns.
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They will also boost your email marketing efforts and help you reach your business goals by developing a tailored email marketing strategy for your business.
Through a wide range of tactics, like SEO, optimized send times, and the creation of compelling subject lines, a specialized email marketing agency will enable you to turn a casual site viewer into a loyal customer.
5 benefits of outsourcing email marketing
Partnering with an email marketing agency comes with plenty of benefits, as we have briefly touched on in the previous section. They will have an intimate knowledge of what makes an email campaign work and how to inject your brand into an email design, for example.
Here are some more ways that outsourcing your campaigns to external email marketing teams will benefit your e-commerce business.
1. Lets you access expertise
When you choose to outsource, you’re getting access to a killer team of email marketing specialists who know everything about their field. They know the ins and outs of creating email marketing strategies that will help you reach your business goals.
An external team will do everything from creating on-point subject lines to designing email templates that align with your branding. All of this will allow you to make sure you stand out in a crowded inbox.
Because of their experience in email marketing, these pros will also know which email marketing software and trends to watch out for, including segmentation and automation.
Rather than trying to write email content yourself, partnering with an email campaign management agency will help you keep up with changing industry standards.
2. Leverages industry insights
Email marketers can bring your business valuable insights into e-commerce industry trends, how audiences are behaving, and the best email outreach strategies – like creating email newsletters.
With all this knowledge, they’ll be able to quickly adapt content depending on consumer behavior to help you meet your email marketing goals more quickly.
3. Scales up your campaigns
Outsourcing makes scaling up your email marketing operations far easier compared to relying on your internal team.
If you’ve only curated a small subscriber list, external email marketing providers can help you grow this using proven and successful marketing tactics.
You could also be relying on outdated, clunky software, which hampers productivity and efficiency, leaving you little room to scale your email campaigns.
An experienced email marketing team will have the time and tools needed to adjust how often you send out emails to customers. So, if you have an upcoming sale or product release, they can send more compelling content to get the word out.
4. Saves on costs and time
If you don’t have a dedicated marketing team, it may seem tempting to delegate email tasks to other employees.
However, this requires training them to create effective email marketing strategies, which can add up in terms of time and costs. Alternatively, hiring a marketing team comes with upfront expenses like posting job ads, providing equipment, and paying wages.
While outsourcing to a third-party provider might appear costly at first, it can lead to long-term savings. You’ll benefit from working with an experienced team that has a proven track record of achieving marketing goals.
Additionally, hiring and managing an in-house team can be time-consuming, taking away focus from other important tasks.
Email marketing success goes beyond writing a few lines of text. It involves managing design, performance analysis, and constant optimization for conversions.
By outsourcing to a dedicated team, you can focus on other critical areas of your e-commerce business, such as product development or supply chain management.
A third-party agency will handle everything from strategy creation to campaign execution, ensuring timely and effective email delivery.
5. Provides a fresher perspective
Internal teams can get stuck in their ways and find it difficult to see the bigger picture. Outsourcing to an email marketing service provider allows you to get a fresher perspective when it comes to your email marketing.
Third parties will be able to analyze what’s working and what’s not and then bring fresh ideas to the table that you may have overlooked internally.
With new ideas come higher engagement rates, helping you to boost your overall sales.
Email marketing agencies might also be able to offer you other insights into how you can improve your overall communication strategies to give your customers a more cohesive and consistent brand experience.
What to expect from your outsourced email marketing team
Now that we’ve taken a look at some of the benefits, here’s what you can expect from an external team.
An external team should deliver a range of specialized services essential for the success of your campaigns, such as:
- Strategy Development and Campaign Planning: Your outsourced team should begin with a thorough analysis of your market position, target audience, and sales goals to develop a tailored email marketing strategy. This strategy will guide the planning and execution of campaigns, ensuring they align with your broader business objectives.
- Design and Content Creation for Engaging Emails: Expect professionally crafted emails designed to capture attention and engage your audience. This includes eye-catching graphics, compelling copy, and a clear call-to-action that resonates with your target demographic.
- List Management and Segmentation Strategies: Effective email marketing relies on well-managed and segmented email lists. Your team should implement strategies to segment your audience based on behavior, demographics, and purchase history to tailor messages accordingly.
- Automation and Personalization Techniques: Leveraging the latest in automation technology, the team should ensure that emails are sent at optimal times and are personalized to the recipients’ interests and behaviors, increasing relevance and engagement rates. Experienced providers also apply deliverability best practices that help identify spam emails, protect sender reputation, and improve inbox placement—ultimately increasing relevance and engagement rates.
Which services you need will obviously depend on your email marketing and business goals. Therefore it’s a good idea to do some research and consider what’s right for you or what isn’t.
When might email marketing outsourcing be an issue?
Outsourcing doesn’t come without its potential downsides. Putting all your trust into a third party can be difficult to do, even if they have mountains of industry experience and stellar references.
Here’s when partnering with an email marketing agency might bring up issues.
Struggling to understand your brand voice
When you outsource, you’re putting all your faith into an external team to seamlessly communicate your brand’s tone of voice. Email marketing agencies are adept at tailoring campaigns to match their clients’ styles, but they still might not be able to capture the true essence of your brand.
Having a lack of control could result in your messages getting lost and you could see a disconnect between your email campaigns and your brand voice.
If you’re conscious that you want a tighter grip on your branding and maintain consistency, then it might be worth considering building your own team through a streamlined recruitment process. Although you may miss out on an agency’s expertise, streamlining the recruitment process will help you to save time, minimize costs and ultimately give you greater control over your brand’s image.
Poor communication
When you outsource, you can’t always keep up with the agency daily. This could lead to potential communication delays. If you have last-minute promotions or you want to quickly change your marketing strategy, you won’t be able to handle that yourself.
Relying on a third party means you’ll have to coordinate both your schedules which would slow down your response times. Unlike an internal team, an external agency will also likely be working with other clients whose campaigns may take priority over yours, delaying their response and actions even further.
Security risks
Handing over your sensitive consumer data to a third party is always risky, even if they have a squeaky-clean reputation. While agencies should prioritize data security, breaches can still happen.
You’ll also want to consider compliance risks. Ecommerce is heavily regulated regarding customer data handling and financial transactions. If an external email marketing team is unfamiliar with these regulations, it could expose your business to legal and financial penalties.
How to choose the right email marketing company
Choosing the right email marketing agency will make or break the success of your campaigns. Your best bet is choosing a marketing team with experience in e-commerce. Of course, you’ll want to also consider your budget and the packages offered before you make any decisions.
Here’s how to select an email service provider that will work seamlessly with your e-commerce business.
Review the packages and pricing options
Before anything else, you should check out the email marketing agency’s pricing and packages. They’ll likely have different levels depending on what services you need.
You could just be after a basic email campaign or a fully integrated marketing strategy. Make sure that the price works with your budget while also considering your return on investment (ROI).
A cheap agency will always be appealing, but you should think carefully about what you’re getting for the price. Investing in a more expensive package will likely come with more expertise and a better overall campaign.
Look at their portfolio
Any reputable email marketing agency will have a solid portfolio showcasing their past projects, complete with deliverables. It will give you a solid idea of what they’re capable of and what they’ve done for businesses similar to yours.
Try asking for case studies or examples of email campaigns specifically for e-commerce businesses. Pay close attention to their designs and the content tone and style. Doing this will help you gauge whether the agency is a good fit for your business.
Check out their e-commerce experience
Email marketing for e-commerce businesses comes with its own unique challenges, which require intimate knowledge of the industry.
Look for an email marketing agency with deep knowledge and direct experience with other e-commerce businesses. They’ll be far more familiar with issues like cart abandonment and how to bring back missed leads.
They’ll also understand:
- Conversion rates
- Average order value
- Customer lifetime value
They’ll be able to adapt your email marketing campaigns based on these KPIs and understand why tracking them is all-important in e-commerce.
Verify their access to tools
Check which tools your potential email agency has access to. Make sure they use modern, industry-leading software. Without it, they’ll struggle to optimize your campaigns and automate and segment email lists.
The right tools will help to automate tasks like sending out welcome emails or abandoned cart reminders so you can focus all your efforts on improving other areas of your e-commerce business.
Final thoughts
If your business doesn’t have the time or the money to hire and train an in-house email marketing team, outsourcing is the best possible option.
It allows you to partner with email experts with years of experience curating successful email marketing campaigns for e-commerce businesses.
While the upfront cost may seem high, the return on investment will make it all worth it.
When you start choosing which email marketing agency to partner with, ask for their portfolio and look closely at their e-commerce experience. That way, you can assess whether the agency is a good fit for your business.
Partner with a third-party email marketing agency today to boost your overall e-commerce leads and sales!
