Every business needs to have email marketing. It plays a crucial role in converting leads into customers. So, it is not a question of whether or not should you start implementing it, but rather, how should you? While it may be an important aspect, you shouldn’t implement it just for the sake of it. It should be approached systematically that best fits your business. In certain cases, the best approach might even be to outsource email marketing.
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How Difficult Can Email Marketing Be?
You know what email means and marketing pertains to. Does that mean you know what email marketing entails?
The hard reality about email marketing is that it is not simple. While its name suggests what it ultimately does, it is more complicated than it seems. This is where most businesses fail. They try to implement the approach on their own, believing that it is something they possess.
Email marketing is more than just sending emails. It is a strategic approach in order to effectively convert leads to customers. One small mistake and you can end up pushing a potential customer away. In that regard, it requires skill and expertise in different fields.
1. Copy Writing
Do you think you can write? Whether it’s a yes or no, you can’t defeat the expertise of someone who has extensively practiced the skill. Copy writing isn’t just about typing text, it is communicating with the subconscious of your customer. It is knowing what they want and imparting their needs in an emotional level. That’s what makes a sale.
2. Graphic Design
When you have your written content, the next hurdle is your graphic content. All text and no graphics make for a boring email. As a matter of fact, the right design elements can point to the overall goal of your email, making it intuitive.
Graphic design is a technical skill. It is not something you can learn overnight. Along with it, you need to have a mind of a creative to formulate appealing designs.
3. HTML Coding
Today’s email marketing is not just about presenting information, it is also about making it interactive. Modern email features allow for clickable text and other interactive elements. You can’t have that without any knowledge of coding.
4. Data Administration
Another important thing to remember is that you are not just creating emails, you are targeting them. No matter how great they are, if they do not feed into the right demographic, they will fail.
Modern email marketing services collect and track information about a contact. You need to understand what those information entails, like what they are in the market for. This will allow you to curate an email that a contact is going to be more susceptible to.
5. Analyzing Performance Metrics
No matter how perfect you think you analyzed your contacts, things usually don’t go according to plan. What you thought would be the perfect email would end up not getting opened or clicked. That’s what makes analyzing the performance of your campaign important. You get to see what you are doing wrong and where should you be concentrating on.
Not everybody has the skill to analyze performance metrics. For the average person, most likely including you, these are just going to look like random numbers. Effective analysis comes from people with extensive experience doing it.
When to Outsource Email Marketing?
There are two ways to do email marketing. Either you hire your own team of graphic artists and marketing experts or you outsource the work you need. The question is, when to do one over the other?
What Does an Inhouse Email Marketing Mean?
Hiring your own email marketing team has its own benefits. You have a group of dedicated workers that are awaiting your command. So, they are always there when you need them. They provide flexibility and an inexhaustive amount of work hours.
However, is a private email marketing team really all good? Before you jump into this option, try to consider the possible drawbacks. It might not be the best one for you when you look at the bigger picture.
1. They Cost A Lot More Than to Outsource Email Marketing
When you hire your own team, it also means that you have to completely pay for their salaries. It doesn’t matter if you only need a graphic artist seldomly, you need to provide them with the right monthly compensation. When you account all the team members, you are looking at a hefty monthly expense.
2. It Requires Constant Management
Your team reports to nobody else but you. While you may think that it is great to have full control, it really isn’t. You need to constantly keep an eye on them and guide them through what you want. When that happens, you can end up spending more time on your email marketing campaign than on decisions important to your business.
3. It Gets Limiting Sometimes
When you have a team that is working only on your business, at some point, their expertise gets narrowed down. What they know how to do becomes limited to what they do on a daily. That can lead to stagnation of progress as your team no longer looks at business aspects from a different perspective.
Looking at the drawbacks, if you think that this isn’t for you, then you might want to outsource email marketing campaigns.
Shift to Outsourcing When You are Experiencing These Problems
If you are one who already has an in-house team, outsourcing can still be a viable choice throughout any point of your journey. The question is, when is it time to make the shift?
1. You Want to Improve Performance
Do you think your campaigns can do more? In most cases, they could. The reason you feel that your progress is plateauing is because you have the same people doing the same thing. If you want to improve your performance, you need a team that can think outside the box.
Outsourcing your email marketing means that you are delegating it to a group that is doing the same work for other businesses. As a result, they have a wide grasp of different industries, allowing them to come up with new solutions and approaches. Their constant exposure makes them see what’s new in the world and apply those to your campaigns.
2. Time is No Longer Enough
After a while of doing your business, you are bound to see growth. Sometimes its slow, and there are cases when it is exponential. Regardless, the responsibilities become more and heavier. As this happens, you are going to need to have more time for more important business aspects. That leaves you with no time to manage your own email marketing team.
What do you do? You outsource outsource email marketing so that what is left to do is tell them what you want to happen. It is the agency who does everything else. They are experts and one thing they know how to do is get leads and customers with their email marketing campaigns without your nonstop guidance.
3. Budget is in Question
Email marketing is difficult only at the start. It is when everything is made, from the copy written material to graphic design. After that, the work gets lesser, which means most of your team will have nothing to do yet you pay them with the full salary. If you are running a big business, the operating expense can be overlooked. However, if you are still starting out, it can get a little too much.
When you outsource email marketing, you get the opportunity to pay for only the things you need done. If you don’t need a specific service anymore such as graphic design, you get to pay much less.
4. You Want to See the Bigger Picture
When you make decisions, you base it off what you know. Sometimes you forget that there is a different perspective. When you can’t look at other opportunities, you can’t expand the capabilities of your business. As a result, you need other people to give you advice. People who have a lot of knowledge about business and marketing.
Who else to ask but people who are in the industry and continuously practicing their profession? When you outsource email marketing, you get advice from professionals who specialize in IT outsourcing services. Your hired team is not just going to say yes all the time. You are given a much bigger picture about the market, the new generation, and everything else you may have no idea about.
Outsource When It is Needed
It has been a pattern among business owners to want to do everything by themselves. That couldn’t be any falser. You can’t manifest all the skills that there is. Most of the time, you need to get the right people to do the job. Whether you are starting out or in the middle of your campaigns, to outsource email marketing is both a viable and economical choice.
