by Tink Taylor, dotMailer

Having decided that email is a key element of the marketing mix, working with an agency can help you to plan, execute and measure your campaigns to optimise deliverability, click-through rates and ensure you get the results you need to maximise your Return on Investment (ROI).

However it can be difficult to differentiate between the digital and traditional marketing agencies, as well as email service providers (ESP) who all now offer email marketing services. The guidelines below will to help you select an email marketing partner that matches your needs.

What service do you require and what sort of agency?

Email marketing has come of age and is no longer simply an inexpensive way to get a message in front of large volumes of consumers. In fact, it is one of the most refined marketing tools at your disposal and a range of specialist skills are required to ensure optimum success. While many digital marketing agencies offer email services, you need to ensure they can offer the full range of skills and specialist knowledge required to improve deliverability, ensure the creative execution is right, and to use campaign data to inform future email marketing activity.

A full service agency will handle every aspect of your email marketing whereas an ESP hosts the sending and provides the necessary tools whilst leaving you in control of creative, data and strategy. The boundaries are blurring however, so it is worth finding out what additional services your ESP can offer – a select number now offer industry-leading expertise across the full range of email marketing skills as well as comprehensive account management and support services.

What capabilities can your email marketing partner offer?

Find out if your partner has the resources to deliver best results. Do they consistently achieve deliverability rates above the industry average? Can they explain how they manage email authentication issues, the role of reputation and the idiosyncrasies of different webmail services?

Make sure you are working with people who know email inside out. Designing creative for emails is very different to offline or even websites. Does the creative team understand the specialist skills required to translate your brand identity into email designs that will render perfectly in every inbox? Can they offer a tool to check whether your emails render across all the major email clients? And can they advise on how behavioural profiling techniques and dynamic email content will improve targeting.

Writing a brief and deciding a budget

Deciding on a brief and a budget will help you define exactly what you need. A brief should include your marketing objectives and how email will integrate with other marketing channels. Work out how much you are willing to spend and measure this against how valuable email marketing will be to your business.

The pitch

Select a shortlist that reflects the wide choice available, before deciding what will best for you. Think about the format of a pitch will allow you to make the best decision.

In addition to the full range of skills listed above, do they have specific sector experience that you can benefit from? Make sure the pitch team is made up of the people who will be managing your account. Do they demonstrate an understanding of your business objectives? Work out a list of criteria and mark each agency accordingly.

Making the decision and negotiating fees and contracts

Your contract should detail the agency’s key tasks, length of project, approval process, fees and commissions, payment terms and termination. This again will depend on the sort of service you select – an agency may well expect a retainer payment whereas an ESP might only charge per number of emails sent.

Day-to-day management and evaluation

Communication is key to ensuring you sustain a fruitful relationship. Give the agency everything they need to get a comprehensive overview of your business and understand what you require and make sure they are equally as open and communicative. Challenging but realistic targets will allow you to evaluate their performance.