What is one benefit of outsourcing your email marketing initiatives?

To help you appreciate the benefits of outsourcing your email marketing initiatives, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best insights. From bringing in fresh perspectives to your initiatives to getting highly personalized email marketing, there are several benefits that you could gain from outsourcing your email marketing to experienced professionals.

Here are nine benefits these leaders gain from outsourcing their email marketing initiatives:

• Bring in Fresh Perspectives to Your Initiatives
• Save Costs on Recruiting and Training of In-House Team
• Ensure High Quality Writing
• Improve Response Rates With Professional Expert
• Free Employees for Other Productive Tasks
• Reduce Cost Through Selective Outsourcing
• Guaranteed Email Delivery
• Free Your Time to Focus on Higher-Level Business
• Get Highly Personalized Email Marketing

Bring in Fresh Perspectives to Your Initiatives

Getting a fresh perspective on your initiative. While internal marketers are already familiar with brand voice and directives, someone from the outside will be able to look at the company messaging from a different point of view. Outsourcing marketing initiatives can be an advantageous strategy because they can think outside the box. While they may need time to get up to speed with brand information, the outsider’s point of view can better assess the needs of the average consumer. Getting a fresh perspective is key.

Stephen Skeel, 7 Wonders

Save Costs on Recruiting and Training of In-House Team

Building a team of in-house email marketers will require precious time and resources — resources that could be put to better use in other areas of your organization. Your HR teams will need to work twice as hard to fill new roles, train the new hires and track their progress. Outsourcing these email marketing campaigns to seasoned experts is way more affordable than handling this mammoth task yourself and the best part — you’ll have the desired results without any guesswork or experimentation.

Harry Morton, Lower Street

Ensure High Quality Writing

We all have our fields of expertise and if writing is not one of yours, then outsourcing your email marketing initiatives is a wise choice. You can have great products and services, but if you do not know how to catch the attention of your reader with your writing, or how to properly guide the recipient into your sales funnel, then it will matter little about the quality of your offerings. 

Having a skilled writer craft your subject lines, engage the reader from the first sentence of your content body, and know how to get your most important message across in the fewest amount of words, will be critical in your success. In outsourcing your email marketing initiatives to skilled professionals, you will ensure that the content of your promotional efforts is of the highest quality, and could be the difference between further engagement or having a sales opportunity slip away.

Matt Miller, Embroker

Improve Response Rates With Professional Expert  

The effectiveness of an email marketing campaign is directly related to campaign-specific conversion metrics used to monitor a campaign’s performance. Metrics such as click to open rate ratios, unique click rates, and hard and soft bounce rates, among many other forms of engagement, are monitored to optimize the success of a campaign.

Outsourcing your email marketing initiatives to specialists leads to increased efficiency, and detailed, strategic, and well-written campaigns. This tasks professionals with an abundance of expertise and experience in monitoring key metrics, A/B testing, and developing specialized email copy, which is bound to increase response rates.

Datha Santomieri, Steadily

Free Employees for Other Productive Tasks

Employees can be more productive with their workday instead of focusing on the build of email marketing campaigns. This can be extremely time-consuming and employees can be using their time in a more effective way. Outsourcing allows workers to focus on content strategy while an outside agency goes right to the experts who may be more efficient in delivering the assets and the build. It’s a win-win on both sides.

Jodi Neuhauser, Ovaterra

Reduce Cost Through Selective Outsourcing

Outsourcing can be beneficial financially because you do not have to outsource all your marketing. If you just need assistance with one part of it, you can find people to do so. For instance, if you already have a great email template but need someone to help with the copywriting aspect, you can outsource for that so that you do not have to pay someone for all other parts of your marketing emails. Take advantage of the freedom to choose exactly what you need to outsource so that you can still keep some of your email marketing resources in-house and save money.

Nick Shackelford, Structured Agency

Guaranteed Email Delivery

In an email marketing campaign, the deliverability of emails plays a major role in the success of the campaign. There are a lot of factors such as being blocked by ISPs, emails landing in spam folders, A/B testing for headlines so that they don’t get flagged by spam filters, etc. If you are trying to do this with an in-house team or by yourself this can be a challenge.

Outsourcing to email marketers or firms who constantly do campaigns and are always up to date with the latest trends and updates will help ensure that your emails reach the audience’s inbox. This can be a major factor in the success of your campaign. It can also ensure that the graphics and images don’t get striped in the delivery and your email marketing campaign can convert the prospects to customers.

Tiffany Homan, Rental Property Calculator

Free Your Time to Focus on Higher-Level Business

One benefit of outsourcing your email marketing initiatives is that you can focus on the higher-level aspects of your business. You no longer have to worry about the nitty-gritty details of managing your email list, sending out emails, and tracking results. Instead, you can focus on making sure that you are providing an excellent product or service to your customers and clients. This will help them become more loyal fans who will continue to recommend your company to their friends and family members.

Chad Rubin, Profasee

Get Highly Personalized Email Marketing

Personalized messages are one benefit of outsourcing your email marketing campaigns. Due to a lack of time and money, many businesses see the value of personalized emails but do not implement them within their own operations. When you outsource, providing knowledgeable prospects and other employees with 1:1 tailored experiences is hassle-free. Make your email campaign stand out from the competition by adding customization down to the smallest details.

Implement an email campaign that would produce a measurable return on investment by utilizing the prospect’s existing information. Someone needs to spend time and expertise on doing this. An efficient email campaign is the result of hours of steadfast work, from setting up automated behavioral triggers in the mail to carefully selecting extremely enticing photos. The best course of action for email personalization is outsourcing. Your consumers will feel appreciated and receive exactly what they need thanks to those targeted emails.

Raviraj Hegde, Donorbox

What causes email marketing campaigns to fail?

To help you best identify the causes for email marketing campaign failures, we asked marketing experts and business leaders this question for their best insights. From focusing on open rates instead of click rates to using outdated subscriber lists, there are several reasons for email campaign failures that you may learn from to best address any problems with your email marketing strategies.

Here are 11 reasons why an email marketing campaign may fail:

• Focusing on Open Rates Instead of Click Rates
• Ineffective Subject Lines
• Not Putting Enough Thought into Your Copy
• Not Doing A/B Testing to Identify the Best Strategies
• Incorrect Email-Targeting Strategy
• Sending Emails Without Permissions
• Emails Being of No Clear Value to Subscribers
• Emails Rely too Heavily on Imagery
• Your Emails Are Not Welcoming Enough
• Inability to Personalize Emails in a Cookieless World
• Using an Outdated Subscriber List

Focusing on Open Rates Instead of Click Rates

Sending an email that does not promote an actionable response does little good to provide something other than awareness, and this is why marketers should instead focus on optimizing emails for clicks. Open rates are growing more and more unreliable, especially in the wake of iOS 15 where all emails default to an open, often giving a business a false read on the effectiveness of their email campaigns. 

The goal should not be to increase open rates, but rather to encourage actual engagement. Therefore, your attention should be on sending the right content to the right audiences at the right time, making certain there is a prominent call to action, as well as visually engaging and interactive elements, and punchy headlines that creates a sense of urgency. By not incorporating click-boosting elements into your emails, you may get subscribers to open them, but the likely result will be a quick deletion or missed sales conversion.

Greg Gillman, MuteSix

Ineffective Subject Lines

The biggest reason email marketing strategies fail is because the offer is never read. This means that you must write short, enticing subject lines that urge the recipient to actually click to view the email’s contents. Think of your subject line as a sneak peek to what’s inside, so be sure to include any sales, discounts or important company information – as space allows.

Shaun Price, MitoQ

Not Putting Enough Thought into Your Copy

Copywriting isn’t the same as writing long-form content. The latter aims to inform while the former aims to sell. And if your advertising copy is boring, sub-par, and simply not eye-catching enough, even the best content will go missed by your customers. To really nail this element of your email marketing campaign, study some of the most effective campaigns to get better at creating impactful copy that will reel in your customers.

Harry Morton, Lower Street

Not Doing A/B Testing to Identify the Best Strategies

You need to do some A/B testing to better understand what email marketing strategies are more useful. Every business is different and has different email audiences, and this is why A/B testing is such an important method for identifying the best email marketing strategies for your particular business. Otherwise, you will feel lost in terms of how to increase your email engagement.

Nick Shackelford, Structured Agency

Incorrect Email-Targeting Strategy

It is incorrectly targeted. People are savvy about their email use and are already flooded with content and even spam mail, and they will ignore or delete emails that aren’t immediately relevant to their interests. It is essential to target your emails and the specifics of the campaign to people who have relevant interest in your brand. By being more specific, you can cut through the noise and get noticed by consumers who are willing to engage with your brand. Targeting the most relevant leads is key.

Brett Estep, Insured Nomads

Sending Emails Without Permissions 

You have probably already been the subject of an unauthorized email marketing campaign. Similarly, you can certainly understand why a consumer cleans out their inbox and starts clicking the “unsubscribe” buttons on emails. When customers feel like they’ve been tricked into receiving tons of emails from marketers, they typically feel like their privacy has been invaded. Most of the time, they will delete your emails, unsubscribe from your list, and in the worst-case scenario report you as spam. Avoid having your messages blocked and automatically redirected to the spam bin by obtaining permission from your target audience instead.

Ilija Sekulov, Mailbutler

Emails Being of No Clear Value to Subscribers

Your emails must convince a busy consumer or professional to provide you permission to send them periodical messages. A small “sign up for our newsletter” button is not enough in today’s digital age. You need to provide clear value to subscribers via compelling content, insightful information, special deals, or other tactics to command their attention and inspire action. If you can’t accomplish this, then your email marketing campaign will inevitably fail.

Datha Santomieri, Steadily

Emails Rely too Heavily on Imagery

We all know how fickle email service providers can be when it comes to serving images correctly, especially in a newsletter format where there may be multiple. If you’re already struggling with deliverability issues or you’re seeing a decline in open rates, the last thing you should do is add more images. Even campaigns from the outset can fail because they rely too heavily on images, and the end result is a spammy-looking email template that doesn’t resonate with audiences. Stick to plain text where possible, and use images sparingly.

James Taylor, Digital Tool Report

Your Emails Are Not Welcoming Enough 

Don’t forget the welcome email! Would you decide to skip the “Hi, how are you doing? I’ve missed you,” part of the phone call with an old friend because you were already friends with them? No! The same goes for marketing email campaigns.

Just because your email campaign is going out to your subscribers does not mean you can skip the welcome email – the welcome email is actually the most important part and has the highest open rate. The welcome email is your way to connect with your subscribers, deepen your relationship, let them know how special they are to you, and tell them what exciting things your campaign has in store for them. And because subscribers like knowing how special they are to you, welcome emails have the highest open – so take advantage of this guaranteed visibility. If you’re lazy and decide to skip the welcome email, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to connect with your audience and your campaign may fail.

Karim Hachem, Sunshine79

Inability to Personalize Emails in a Cookieless World

Optimizing the user experience, delivering personalized messages, and maximizing consent rates — all while respecting users’ privacy is crucial to any email marketing campaign’s success. In a future without third-party cookies, successful email marketers will be those that prioritize gathering first-party data; user data from their own websites, app, social channels, etc. Then they’ll need to use it responsibly by emphasizing consent-based approaches.

Jon Torres, SEO Marketing Guy

Using an Outdated Subscriber List

One reason an email marketing campaign might fail is outdated data. You can have the most attractive deal ever, but still fall short because of inactive subscribers. Always maintain the most up to date information on your email subscriber list and remove unengaged users regularly. Another good tip for this is to run email verification on subscribers that have not been emailed in thirty-plus days.

Kevin Callahan, Flatline Van Co.

What are the best back-to-school email marketing campaign strategies?

To help you best target your back-to-school email marketing campaigns, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best strategies. From making the campaign relevant for all ages to appealing to college students with contests, there are several strategies that may help your email campaigns win over customers to patronize your back-to-school offerings.

Here are eight back-to-school email campaign strategies:

• Make The Campaign Relevant for All Ages
• Entice With a Buy-One-Donate-One Offer
• Highlight Relevant Self-Care Routines
• Launch a Back-to-School Loyalty Program
• Offer Exclusive Discounts and Coupons
• Structure The Email Like a Class Schedule
• Personalize Your Emails
• Appeal to College Students With Contests

Make The Campaign Relevant for All Ages

Incorporate the back-to-school theme for everyone! Make the idea seem relevant for those no longer in school to avoid unwanted messages. For example, play with the wording by using the theme as a time for everyone to learn something new or take a refresher course. Try something like, “When the kids head back to school, choose a new hobby like yoga. Use this 20% off coupon to start learning today!”

Jeff Goodwin, Orgain

Entice With a Buy-One-Donate-One Offer

One of the best back-to-school marketing email campaigns is buy one, donate one. For every purchase a customer makes, donate one of the same items, or the monetary equivalent, to a charity that helps students in need. Those who want to make a difference will prefer to buy your product over another business. Additionally, the charitable donation and associated marketing will hugely boost brand awareness.

Kevin Callahan, Flatline Van Co.

Highlight Relevant Self-Care Routines

Self-care during the school year is so important. How are students supporting their mental and physical well-being after class, homework, and extracurricular activities? Brands can highlight self-care routines such as product recommendations or tactics that lower stress levels. This is a relevant and timely marketing campaign that puts the consumer first.

Natália Sadowski, Nourishing Biologicals

Launch a Back-to-School Loyalty Program

One solid back-to-school email marketing campaign strategy is launching a loyalty program. Alongside back-to-school sales, have your email newsletter offer students, parents, or teachers the chance to enroll in your customer loyalty program. Tell them all the reasons to keep coming back and why your program is the best. Go a step further and incorporate how it can help them achieve in the classroom too.

Sasha Ramani, MPOWER Financing

Offer Exclusive Discounts and Coupons

Many companies ramp up their marketing efforts during the back-to-school season, as parents and students alike are looking for great deals on everything from clothes to school supplies. However, with so many businesses vying for attention, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd.

One way to make your company’s email marketing campaign stand out is to offer exclusive discounts and coupons to subscribers. This will not only entice recipients to open your emails, but it will also encourage them to take advantage of your special offers. You can also segment your email list by school district or type of student (e.g., elementary, middle, or high school), which will allow you to customize your message and ensure that it is relevant to each recipient. By taking the time to craft a well-targeted and engaging email campaign, you can make sure that your business gets noticed by the right people during the busy back-to-school season.

Jim Campbell, Wizve – Digital & Affiliate Marketing Agency

Structure The Email Like a Class Schedule

We’re firm believers in the equation that if you make emails fun, people will read them and scroll further. A great back-to-school example would be to structure your email in a way that reads like a class schedule. Start with “Period 1: Math”, then offer your tips or product recommendations such as a calculator. Next, “Period 2: English”, then offer the same such as a dictionary or writing utensils. You can even break out funny things like “lunch” or “recess” and feature a lunchbox or sport supplies. A big part of email marketing is being able to put your reader in the environment of what you’re discussing and this is a clever way to do that.

Kelly Skelton, Fat Kid Deals

Personalize Your Emails

One tip is to personalize your emails. By including students’ names in the subject lines of your emails, you can make them more likely to open the messages. Additionally, including students’ names in the content of your emails can help create a more personal connection with your readers. This will result in more engaged readers, who are more likely to take action on the content you provide.

Karen Ebanks, Karan Real Estate

Appeal to College Students With Contests 

Marketing to college students is a bit different from marketing to the parents of K-12 school children. In college, many students begin to become responsible for their own finances so they have a desire to save money as much as possible.

One way to appeal to this demographic is to include a contest in the newsletter. The contest could have a prize that would be highly desirable for college students such as a laptop or an Amazon gift card. The email can include a CTA asking people to share it on social media in order to generate more buzz around the contest, and therefore, more sales. It could be an essay contest or a drawing contest to give students the chance to showcase their creativity. Of course, the overall theme of the newsletter would be back-to-school, so it can also include fun trivia facts and reviews or insights from other college students. Ideally, the contest winner should be announced at least two weeks prior to when students return to the classroom.

Jibran Qazi, MCPD

What are some summer email marketing campaign ideas that actually work?

To help you launch a successful summer email marketing campaign, we asked email marketers and business leaders this question for their best tips. From creating offline travel reads to presenting seasonal discounts, there are several summer email marketing campaign ideas that have been proven to capture the attention of audiences.

Here are eight summer email marketing campaign ideas:

• Create Offline Travel Reads to Capture a Captive Audience
• Think About Parents in Summer Time
• Connect Your Emails to the Outdoors
• Prize Draws and Contests
• Pay Attention to Summer Sales!
• Offer Summertime Tips and Resources.
• Send Emails Later in the Day
• Present Seasonal Discounts in a Travel-themed Newsletter

Create Offline Travel Reads to Capture a Captive Audience

One creative idea for a summer email marketing campaign is to send a series of “travel reads” recipients can save and read later offline while on car trips or in line at the airport. This trick capitalizes on the idle time spent journeying to summertime locations and lends you a captive audience who is likely to pay you full attention. The most crucial part of the plan is to create content that is practical and helpful and not merely advertorial and to include a call to action to draw folks back online.

Michael Alexis, TeamBuilding

Think About Parents in Summer Time

Summer time can be difficult for stay-at-home parents because they are trying to find constant entertainment for their kids while they’re out of school. While creating a summer email marketing campaign, think about how your product or service could support moms (or certainly dads) that are home with their kids all day. Could you promote something that would distract or entertain the kids? Does your product or service allow the moms or dads to relax once the kids are in bed? Does it make their day easier so they can focus on their children more? Summer means 24 hours of taking care of children for a large group, so create an email campaign that will make their job easier!

Logan Mallory, Motivosity

Connect Your Emails to the Outdoors

Summer invokes thoughts of vacations and theming your email around the positive emotions associated with sunny carefree days is a great way to build a summer email marketing campaign. Reading emails is primarily an indoor activity which is opposite of what we pair with summer, thus, creating a connection to the outdoors and activity is a must in order to build a successful campaign.

Sending emails with fun outdoor activity suggestions, a summer music playlist through Spotify, or best beaches to visit checklist, can tie your business to that theme of fun. When customers receive this email, they will feel those positive emotions and associate with your business, building the connections you desire. By tailoring your email to touch on the positive emotions people associate with summer, you will build a successful marketing campaign that will lead to conversions.

Cody Candee, Bounce

Host Competitions to Begin Conversations

In my opinion, this “begins a conversation in your community with your customers,” which in turn strengthens their loyalty to your company. The Father’s Day holiday is a great opportunity to host a candy guessing or essay writing contest for youngsters. Your summer email marketing campaign will stand out from the crowd of generic newsletters with this added touch of warmth and humanity. Competitions are a great way to develop low-cost, high-return content for your email and social media marketing campaigns. Promote contests and freebies through your newsletter and other online outlets. Prizes in Starbucks’ Summer Game competition are both enjoyable and useful, and the event is seamlessly integrated with the company’s loyalty program.

Jay Bats, ContentBASE

Pay Attention to Summer Sales

Summer holiday sales are an effective marketing campaign because consumers are primed to look for deals and are ready to shop at certain times of the year. Memorial Day and the Fourth of July are holidays where people search for steals on products and services. Back to school is another time when people are ready to spend. Tap into the natural cycle of sales for a compelling summer marketing campaign.

Sumeer Kaur, Lashkaraa

Offer Summertime Tips and Resources

Summer is the time when most people are out enjoying the sunshine. According to Marketing Insider Group, email newsletters have a 23.4% open rate. What happens after people open these emails is entirely up to the marketer. No matter what industry your business is in, you can use related summertime tips and resources in your newsletter. 

For example, if you’re running an online food publication, you can add a new summer recipe to your weekly newsletter. It’s important to include a CTA and link at the bottom like “check out more of our sizzling summer recipes”. This will drive traffic to your website by increasing engagement. Helpful tips such as how to keep your bread from molding during the summer months establish authority for the brand and drive interest by providing useful information that consumers are looking for. Tips coupled with resources create strong newsletters with higher engagement rates than those that simply include company updates or news alone.

John Cammidge, JTC Consultants

Send Emails Later in the Day

In the summer, many people are enjoying the sunshine. They’re outside doing activities. They may even eat dinner later because it gets dark later. So don’t send your marketing emails when your audience isn’t as likely to be reading. Understanding the seasonal lifestyles of your customers is a key to success.

Scott Lieberman, Touchdown Money

Present Seasonal Discounts in a Travel-themed Newsletter

Summer is a time when a lot of people travel. Beach destinations and outdoor adventures in the mountains resonate with people. Using color schemes often associated with summer such as orange, yellow, and light blue can make your email more visually appealing and relevant to summer readers.

Additionally, images of beaches or the wilderness reinforce the idea that summer is in full effect. Once you have a solid email template, write or have an email copywriter create the body of the email. Subject lines like “splash into our summer sale” or “25% off on everything under the sun” can get more people opening your emails.

Aside from offering seasonal discounts in the newsletter itself, you can include a giveaway on the landing page with travel items or tickets to a coveted holiday destination. Research from Unbounce suggests that giveaways increase subscriptions by more than 700%. With more subscriptions comes more conversions. This is how your newsletter can get more traction this summer.

Dustin Ray, Inc File