If you're looking to hand over your email marketing to a full-service email marketing agency, it's crucial that you align on goals and set clear expectations from the outset. An email marketing services agency that specialises in this space can drive great results, but only if they clearly understand what you're aiming to achieve.

Before partnering with an email marketing company, take some time to think through your objectives, priorities and ideal outcomes. This will allow the agency to map a strategy tailored to your business, as well as measure performance against benchmarks that matter to you.

Outline Your Goals

First, clarify your core email marketing goals.

• What is my primary purpose for investing in email campaigns? Do you simply want to drive more website traffic? Generate leads? Encourage customer retention and loyalty? Facilitate cross-selling and upselling opportunities? All the above?

• What does email marketing success look like for my business in the short and long-term? Set specific, measurable goals like increasing your email subscribers by 15% quarter-over-quarter or boosting coupon redemption rates by 10 percentage points year-over-year.

Getting ultra clear on the why and what will provide essential direction for the agency. Ensure you document both quantitative and qualitative goals across a timeline, balancing urgency with sustainability.

Prioritise Your Target Audience

Who exactly are you trying to reach via email campaigns? Don’t just say “customers” or “subscribers” - dig deeper. Effective segmentation is the foundation of any solid email marketing strategy.

Sit down and profile your target audiences in depth.

• What are their demographics like age, location, gender?

• What type of content, offers or messaging tends to engage them best?

• What are their habits in terms of email open rates, click through rates and conversions?

Share all your rich insight into current customer and subscriber segments with your chosen agency. This will empower them to develop tailored creative, content and calls-to-action fine-tuned to what your best audiences are likely to respond to.

Set Expectations Around Deliverability

Deliverability refers to your emails actually landing in subscriber inboxes rather than blocked or relegated to spam folders. This is a science in itself, impacted by factors like sender reputation, email authentication protocols, and more.

While best practice deliverability is built into any email marketing program, be realistic about limitations here. No agency can guarantee 100% inbox placement 100% of the time. Discuss:

• What deliverability rates are you seeing now?

• What benchmark would you deem a successful deliverability metric?

• How quickly do you expect deliverability gains to materialise?

Agreeing on a fair deliverability goal will help prevent unrealistic expectations down the track. Be open to slight initial dips as new strategies are established before climbing towards an agreed target.

Define Communication Cadence Needs

Email marketing pushes out campaigns on an ongoing basis, not one-off projects. One of the agency’s tasks will be keeping your brand top-of-mind by delivering remarketing emails tailored to customer lifecycle stage.

To keep you in lockstep, decide upfront:

• How often would you like email performance reports? Weekly or monthly?

• Do you want to manually review/approve every email before it is deployed?

• Would you prefer scheduled catch-up calls or ad hoc communications if needed?

• What metrics matter most to track (Open rates? Click-through-rates? Conversion rates?)

Clearly signalling your preferences here will help the agency sync into cadences that suit your management style and information needs.

Map Roles and Responsibilities

Any successful partnership relies on clearly defined roles to prevent key activities falling through cracks between teams. Who is responsible for what?

For email marketing, capabilities often break down as:

Agency – Campaign strategy, creative direction and copywriting, graphic design, programming and testing, customer data integration, reporting.

Client – Sign-off on campaign direction, provide updated contacts as your subscriber list grows, share customer insight to inform messaging, report any campaign issues.

Discuss exactly where accountabilities will sit across both teams for essential functions like list management, content generation and quality control. Having an RACI matrix as a reference can help ensure no confusion further down the track.

Invest Time Upfront

Drafting a detailed brief covering all the elements above requires some dedicated time and strategic thought at the start. But it's an investment that pays off exponentially in better campaign execution and results. Performing this prep work Sets your agency partner up for success by giving them everything they need to activate effective email programs tailored to your unique business needs.

Rather than rushing into an agency relationship with vague directives or assumptions, take the time required to clarify and document what success looks like for your brand when it comes to email marketing. Implementing these best practice tips will have you well on the way to email marketing glory.