How To Improve Email Marketing

Email is still the dominant force in marketing. It has weathered the storm of a surge in new channels and ways to reach consumers, still proving to be the most lucrative marketing tactic available. But how do you go beyond the basics and improve? And what if you're already quite advanced but you want to take it to the next level? In this blog I will share a variety of ways for you to quickly improve your email marketing. 

1. Get support from your ESP

The vast majority of marketers will turn to their email service provider as their primary contact to improve email marketing. Whilst your ESP will be able to provide you with some high-level guidance and whilst we love all of the great email technology companies we get to work with, this is not the best place to go to if you want to take things to a whole new level.

Why is this? Well, your ESP is a technology company. I have ran the professional services teams for three big ESPs and their primary focus is to sell licences to their technology and retain and grow those licences. Email marketing platforms are great at building tools and helping you to use those tools, but they are not best placed to help you improve your email marketing strategy. This is simply because they are not a professional services organisation. It is not in their nature or interest to grow their business through consulting and agency services. In fact, many big ESPs outsource email consultancy, email design and email template builds to external specialist email agencies.

Think about your account management support at your ESP. Account managers at email technology companies are pretty up-to-date with general trends, but a lot of their advice is likely to be a little dated and high-level. Email platforms are experts in helping people to use their platform well. They are not often experts in email marketing strategy or design or automation. It's best to work with an email marketing agency to get the best results possible.

2. Upskill 

There's no doubt that some continued professional development will serve you well in improving your email marketing results. Whilst agencies and technology partners will always be able to provide solid support and guidance, there's nothing better than getting ahead of the curve yourself.

There are so many blogs, online resources and amazing conferences that will help you to improve your knowledge and skills in email marketing. Sites such as Econsultancy, Litmus and Smart Insights are all really great places to start improve your email marketing. 

To get you started, we've created a whole bunch of free email marketing resources including a free email marketing audit that will enable you to improve your email marketing quickly. 

3. Hire an email marketing agency

The absolute best thing that you could do to improve your email marketing is to hire a specialist email marketing agency. Why? Here are some of the key reasons why an email agency is the best solution to  the solution to improving email marketing:

• An email agency is technology-agnostic. this means that they don't care about trying to get you to use a specific tool or technology solution. An email marketing agency will only be interested in the perfect tech solution for your needs. this gives you extremely unbiased potential
• Good email marketing agencies will start with your strategy and then look for the right tools. This is rarely the approach that marketers take, but it is the most effective approach and get the best results
• Email marketing agencies are ahead of the curve because all they focus on is improving their clients performance and the absolute latest innovations in the industry. Having these people around your marketing team will set you up for success
• An email marketing agency will be way more specialised and focused on a regular digital marketing agency. In fact, it's not uncommon for us to see extremely dated and old-fashioned approaches from traditional digital marketing agencies. Don't fall into this trap - work with a specialist email agency

Lastly, a great email marketing agency will be able to work seamlessly with your email marketing technology provider (ESP), as well as all of your other agencies and internal teams. Always ask a potential email agency, how their work will be developed to integrate with the entire customer experience -  this is not a nice to have, it is essential. This will ensure that everything you are doing to improve your email marketing will be carefully integrated into all of your other marketing channels.

Want to get started? Talk to us about how we can help you to improve your email marketing.

4. How to integrate an email marketing agency

Now, you're probably wondering how an email marketing agency will fit into your workflow? Here's how we work with most of our clients:

• The email agency: Leads and defines the strategy, tactics and roadmap alongside the client as well as the technology provider (ESP).  This global view of not just what the current ESP is able to achieve in terms of functionality, as well as the entire marketplace of tools and technologies, coupled with a close relationship with the client marketing team is the recipe for success.  this way, you will always have a guardian for email marketing who is able to take you in any direction at any given moment, based on the most up-to-date trends and changes without any bias for any email tools
• The client: Leads and defines the overall marketing strategy. They only seek technical implementation advice from their ESP to enable them to execute campaigns and email automations as best as possible
• The ESP: Enables the client to make progress by enabling the marketer to understand how to get the most from the tools that they provide. They do not provide strategic guidance, but they will likely provide tactical ideas and support on how to refine what is already in place and how to get the most from the email service provider

Want to take your email marketing to a whole new level?

Enchant is the UK's leading email marketing agency. We offer a wide range of email marketing services, helping brands to reach their full potential with effective customer-centric strategies. Contact us today and see how we can help you improve your email marketing.

Want to quickly improve open rates? Grab Enchant's Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing Subject Lines to start optimising your email marketing subject lines to get the best from every campaign.