The definitive guide to outsourcing your email marketing

I spoke to my Mum on the phone the other day and she burst into tears.
 

"Oh, Tommy," she told me. "I've had a terrible day. I'm going to hand in my resignation."
 

"Why?" I asked. "What's happened?"
 

Now, I'm not going to lie, I feared the worst. My Mum's the PA to the managing director of a company that teaches people to fly helicopters as well as running pleasure flights. When it comes to things that can go wrong - there's a lot of them. Especially in Covid times.
 

Thankfully my fears were misplaced. The disaster? She'd sent out an email to their customer database using Outlook and hadn't BCC'd the email addresses. Not great, but not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination. 
 

But there's still so many things wrong with this:
 

1) It's 2021, why are they sending out emails to their customer database with Outlook?
 

2) Why was it so rushed and last minute?
 

3) Why was the job given to someone with extremely limited experience with email marketing?
 

The end result was upset customers, an upset member of staff and an email that made the business look amateur (at best) and grossly incompetent (at worst).
 

The thing is, this isn't uncommon. It happens all the time, every day, up and down the land. Email marketing becomes an afterthought and people (often wrongly) assume they can do it themselves and get the same results.
 

Email marketing is a craft and an art form. It's a potent mix of creativity and data backed up by business acumen. And, to harness its full power, you need to understand how it works and, specifically, how it will best work for your business.
 

Look at this way, sometimes it pays to bring in the experts. 
 

What do you do if the electrics go in your house? You call an electrician. 
 

What do you do if you really want to impress someone with a slap-up meal? You take them to a restaurant so a chef can cook it. 
 

What do you do if your car breaks down? You call the AA.
 

Just because you can send out email marketing campaigns on your own, it doesn't mean you should. 
 

Be honest with yourself here and ask: "Can we do this on our own?"
 

For some, the answer is yes. For most, the best answer is: "We need someone to help us."
 

This help can take many different forms. As examples, we have clients where we look after absolutely everything for them, from design through to deployment. For others, we help them create a strategy that they execute themselves or we create gorgeous templates they can use or we use our technical know-how to set up automated journeys or integrations for them.
 

Just like if you were building a house, you might paint the walls yourself but you'd most likely check with a structural engineer before you knock a load-bearing wall down.
 

Consider the questions below when you're deciding whether to outsource your email marketing: 

Do you have the time, resources and expertise?
 

Creating brilliant email marketing campaigns takes a huge amount of work. Even if you're using templates you still have to worry about how your emails look, whether they work properly across all devices, the content in them, the calls to action, the send time, the data the campaign is being sent to - the list goes on. It isn't a quick job. If you don't have the resources, expertise or time in-house then outsourcing becomes an attractive and viable option.

Is there a strategy in place and do you know what results you want to see?
 

There's no point in doing something just because you think you have to. Time and time again we see email campaigns being sent out without any thought to them. Firstly, you should have a clear and well-defined strategy in place. Secondly, you should know what you want your email campaigns to do and how you want your subscribers to engage with them. Always ask yourself: "Why are we sending this? What do we want it to achieve?"

Do you have a way of measuring how successful your email marketing is?
 

Following on from the above, it's essential to know what metrics you want to measure to determine how successful your campaigns have been. The insight and analysis of email marketing campaigns should always go beyond just looking at open and click-through rates. It's often here where outsourcing can deliver unexpected value.

How well do you understand data and can you ensure you're compliant?
 

Ever since GDPR came into force in 2018, compliance and data management have taken on a whole new importance. Data can be a minefield. Knowing where your data comes from, managing it correctly and understanding the most effective ways to use it are all integral to a successful email marketing strategy that complies with the new regulations. 

How advanced do you want your email marketing campaigns to be?
 

Like we said earlier, there are some jobs that require a significant jump up in expertise. Whether it's building automated journeys, sending behavioural-driven emails or utilising AI and machine learning, sometimes it really does pay to bring in the experts.

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Ultimately, the decision on how you manage your email marketing, whether you keep it in-house or whether you outsource it, is yours to make.
 

And if you do make the decisions to outsource, find a partner who can help you:
 

• Create, send and deliver better email marketing campaigns.
• Save time and money.
• Better utilise your resources.
• Build better relationships with your customers and subscribers.
• Turbocharge your ROI.
• Get the edge over your competition.

If your email marketing isn't giving you the results you want, is taking up too much of your valuable time or is simply causing you unnecessary stress, then it's time to call in the experts.
 

And there's no one better than Jarrang.