Introduction As a marketing professional, you ll know that the last few years in the industry have been characterised by dramatic change shifts in philosophy, accompanied by the adoption of new and exciting ideas and platforms. Email marketing has grown and developed along with the marketing industry as a whole. This has been led by a growth in marketing automation and the current trend for inbound marketing. On top of this, email marketing is still widely understood to provide one of the highest ROIs of any marketing channel. Email marketing should be a key element of an agency s service offering, and will prove to your clients that you are an expert - one that offers more benefits than most. Studies show that 66% 1 of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message. In 2014, email marketing was cited as the most effective digital marketing channel for customer retention in the United States. 2 In order for you to benefit, you need to be able to offer your clients an email marketing service
that they can make their own. In all likelihood, you don t have the time to build this yourself so you need a white label solution that works for you. It also needs to tick all the boxes you expect in email design and production including managing all of your clients in one place. That s why we created Instiller, an email solution custom-made solely for agencies. In our packages, we offer everything you could possibly need in order for you to provide your clients with the best email marketing platform. Find out more in our blog article about how email marketing can make your agency stand out. Here s the thing: if you re an agency and you aren t currently offering email to your clients, the likelihood is that they re using a service like MailChimp or Campaign Monitor. That s fine for them, and they probably don t think any less of you: but that valuable revenue is ending up in the pockets of those companies, rather than yours. Wouldn t it be better in your pocket? In this ebook, we re going to explore the benefits of harnessing the power of email marketing as part of your range of services.
Why email marketing? The good news is that email is a channel which significantly supports rather than disrupts other techniques. So, let s say you re creating digital content for your clients right now. You probably know that pieces of gated content such as ebooks and white papers are fantastic lead generation tools. But what s happening to those leads once you pass them on? With the best will in the world, they re at the mercy of your clients internal structures and processes. They may be acted upon. They may not. Email marketing allows you to set up drip-feeds and nurture campaigns that will turn those embryonic leads you re generating, through distributed content, into fully-fledged customers. This is going to supercharge your client satisfaction rate and give you the power to much more accurately quantify your ROI as a marketing agency. Compared to the non-agency email marketing companies out there, such as MailChimp and Constant Contact, you will be able to offer a complete package that includes the software and the design as well as all the other important features expected when creating great email marketing campaigns e.g. reporting and analysis. Being able to offer your clients both the software along with the design is going to make your service offering much more powerful. Let s get into some of these benefits in more detail...
1. Stronger client relationships The success of your agency largely depends on your ability to build and maintain client relationships. Keeping that consistency of communication and bonding a client to your business is key. So rather than having to pass your customer to, let s say MailChimp, you can instead provide a white label email marketing service that is 100% integrated with your brand. Doing this gives your agency a more professional and authoritative stand point. It sends a powerful message that you know what you re talking about, so your client can trust you and take your advice regarding management of their email campaigns. You re giving them a solution to use rather than directing them to a competitor. This bonds the client to your service rather than them having to use a generic piece of email software. Using your solution they will feel more connected to your agency and far less likely to want to switch between email marketing service providers. Since all features are included as standard with Instiller you are able to set your own packages depending on what your clients need. This gives you peace of mind and allows you to continue strengthening the relationship you have the client won t need to explore other email marketing
routes, as everything is available from the off. Instiller provides agencies with one professional, easy to use email marketing solution that s feature-rich, branded and can be individually customised for each client.
2. Better brand identity As an agency, it s highly likely you re either responsible for your clients branding and identity and you ll be more than familiar with creating brand assets for them. If you had to pass email design over to another agency it could turn into a frustrating experience when it comes to misuse of the clients brand; whether it s inferior design or simply inaccurate interpretation. Being able to provide a complete email design service works toward consistency of brand and the client will have a stronger identity through all the brand elements of logo, colour, type,print materials and all the way through to their email communication. Having brand consistency is of utmost importance for any organisation as even the slightest deviations or inconsistencies will be picked up subconsciously by customers who may think of the brand as sub-par, amateur or incomplete. Providing a complete email marketing service that is brand focused will strengthen their identity and ensure your clients keep coming back for more.
A white label solution where you can manage all of your clients email marketing projects within one application is not only efficient and cost effective, but importantly it enables you to reinforce their branding through elements of their email campaigns including custom sending, custom click domains and sender reputation.
3. Profit growth 54% 3 of emails sent by businesses are marketing messages and by the year 2016 there will be over 4.3 billion 4 email accounts! The Email marketing Census from Adestra 2014 5 also found that companies attributed 23% of their total sales to the email marketing channel, compared to 18% in the year before. It s hard to ignore the facts and they all indicate the benefits of email marketing. It therefore seems counter-productive to not make email a part of the packages you offer to your clients. Let s look at the alternative, you don t use our white label email marketing solution. Instead you send your client to MailChimp, giving the revenue you could have earned in this area to them. They could then decide to use another agency for their design if they are after a change. Our branded solution not only bonds the strong client relationship you have and helps with brand consistency but also provides you with a recurring revenue stream. With Instiller you pay for the service and get everything you need to provide your client with a package that can be tailor-made and 100% bespoke to them, allowing you to set whatever rate you like for each individual client. For example, our Growth Plan allows you to set the number of emails your agency will send per month and our price will be set on this. So if your agency sends 500,000 emails a month, which from us would cost approximately 850 a month, and you have 10 clients who require email marketing you can allocate 50,000 emails per client and set the price at 500 a client per month...making you a profit of 4,150!
Let s also say that your average customer value is 2,500 per month. Adding email management in to this package at 500 per month will increase your average customer value by 20%. Email marketing soltuions and design services are an up-sell which allows you to increase your average spend per client and can make a huge addition to your bottom line. There are so many additions you can include to increase your value to the client. This can include list building; segmentation of email data and email marketing automation workflows; drip feed campaign planning, strategy and implementation. Email marketing offers a wide range of additional revenue streams and opportunities, so take advantage and reap the benefits.
4. Be impressive, wow your clients So you ve impressed your clients with the option of fully integrated email marketing that fits in with their brand and you ve managed to increase your ROI along the way. The next thing to do is to impress your clients with the creative and engaging campaigns that can be produced through Instiller. Instiller includes a drag and drop email designer that makes it easy to design responsive email templates without ever having to see a line of code. Plus, you can create custom designs for clients for them to edit without the risk of breaking anything. Working this way means your client gets a consistent design every time that looks great and you get peace of mind knowing your clients will always be happy. Remember 91% of consumers use email at least once a day (ExactTarget) and unlike social media there s no need to trawl through live feeds of constantly updating information instead it s there in front of them, so take advantage of this.
List building The ability to build large, relevant lists can be really impressive to your clients. There are plenty of advanced techniques out there, but start out with the basics: get an understanding of what audiences like and dislike so that emails can be tailored to include more of the likes and less of the dislikes. Promote email content on other platforms, targeting those customers out there who are already involved in the brand but haven t taken the step to sign up to email. Running an exclusive email only promo that you push on social media can actively entice those stragglers. Read up on more ways about how to do this in our ebook: 12 ways to build your email list. List hygiene List hygiene is a big deal, too. Keep your clients lists fresh with the auto-cleansing feature which suppresses those emails who repeatedly hard bounce and could cause the senders reputation to be damaged for future email campaigns. Find out more in our video about list hygiene.
Reporting, metrics and ROI Email comes with hundreds of benefits, but, as an agency, we know that your clients are often preoccupied with metrics. The ability to demonstrate that what you re doing works is fundamental. Check out our blog article, Why email marketing metrics are important and how to use them. With Instiller, all of our packages come with highly intuitive reporting tools; see how many people are opening emails and clicking through to websites with Click through and Conversion rates. Improve click through rates for your clients by split testing their emails to see which engage their audiences better. As consumer habits continue to change, it s also important to know how, where and when your audience access their emails. What device do they use? What time of day do they open your emails? And where do they do it? Our Engagement Analysis and Geo-Location reporting tools give you a simple, clear and powerful view of all these factors.
Why Instiller? So, in this ebook, we hope we made a strong case for email marketing, and gave you a useful guide to rolling it out for your clients. In fact, we hope you found it so useful that you ll indulge us for one last chapter while we explain the merits of our own email marketing platform here at Instiller and lay out why it s the solution you re looking for to incorporate email into your own agency s product offering. First, the basics. It seems like five minutes ago, but it s now over a decade since we started Instiller all the way back in 2004. Instiller, very simply, is the email marketing solution for agencies delivering all the tools you need to provide a complete email marketing service for your clients. What makes us right for you? Let s start with the fact that we only work with agencies. We aren t your competition, here. Our entire solution has been designed specifically for agencies like yours and, not only does this mean that it s tailor-made for your needs, it means that we re not out there seeking out the same customers as you are. So, say your client 123-Hosting wants to get involved in email marketing.
Ultimately, competing solutions such as Campaign Monitor and MailChimp want those guys using their service. Instiller, on the other hand, wants to give you the tools to do it for them. There s also the fact that we re white label. Your client simply doesn t need to know about Instiller it can be our little secret. You ll have the power to fully brand our platform with the logo and colours of each and every one of your clients. Not sure on the finer technical points of email? We know you have other stuff to focus on, which is why we provide expert support and why we designed Instiller to have an intuitive and easy to use interface. We could talk about Instiller all day but we ll settle for five minutes chatting about how we might be able to help your agency! Why not give us a call on 0333 939 0013 to find out more?
Sources 1 http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats-list 2 Emarketer via http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics 3 http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats-list 4 http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/email-statistics-report-2012-2016-executive-summary.pdf 5 http://hosted.adestra.com/adestra/census/email-census-2014.pdf Visit instiller.co.uk to start your free and unlimited 14 day trial today