A lot of brands waste money on vendors who simply provide aesthetically pleasing template designs, while they reap the rewards from accessing your open rates and leave you stagnating in revenue.
The entire marketing system is broken for brands. There is no need for a partner who will merely hit the send button for you; you require a true operator that can understand customer lifetime value, strict list hygiene, and the technical ability to place emails in an inbox.
Selecting the best vendor requires you to block out all the hype and place your focus on data, platform expertise, and actual revenue attribution.
Evaluating Top Email Marketing Agencies by Operations, Not Hype
You should not be using a generic review site to find the top email marketing agencies. You will need to be using a strict operational vendor evaluation rubric to evaluate a vendor.
To be successful when going through the vendor selection process, you will need to evaluate a vendor in three strict categories. First, platform expertise; if a vendor does not know the tool you are using, they are going to break your existing email campaign flow. Second, revenue impact; do not accept any vendor that only provides the number of opens as proof of revenue impact.
Third, high-level pricing transparency. Not only will a vendor have a minimum investment level and require a certain length of time for onboarding, but you want to find a vendor that offers you complete pricing transparency and flexibility based on your business constraints.
In order to reduce the amount of competing noise, the below firms are categorized by the business types they serve best. We provide their verifiable proof of revenue impact first, and expose their operational constraints immediately to help you understand how their execution model matches up with your exact revenue goals.
1. Inbox Army
This vendor is a huge organization designed for scalability. They provide direct marketing strategy, technical deliverability, visual design, and complex data migration. Because of the size of their organization, they can scale clients' accounts quickly and efficiently.
Indeed, while this model has the potential for significant savings on traditional marketing operations, these savings are spread thinly throughout a very large client base. The focus on volume leads to a diluted level of strategic attention towards clients due to the fact that there are so many accounts.
Optimal Use Cases: Ideal for budget and mid-market brands.
Testimonials and Proof Points: The combination of over 30% savings on marketing operations reported by clients and the fact that this agency works with over 5,000 brands strengthens their claims to be the most effective marketing agency available for budget and mid-market brands.
Constraints: High volume equals buying someone else's execution power, but you are also giving up the opportunity to develop your own strategy, as well as the opportunity to hire a dedicated executive to manage your marketing strategy.
Technology Stack: Platform agnostic, supporting 40+ different sending platforms.
Pricing Structure: Between $100-$149 an hour, with a small entry cost of $1,000. Monthly project sizes can range between $3,000-$5,000 on average.
2. Flowium
Flowium does not waste time on generic B2B efforts; they build eCommerce lifecycle sequences only. Their strength lies in their ability to focus on advanced list segmentation.
If you are a retail brand with a high volume, their approach prevents the type of errors companies with a generalist marketing approach typically make.
Optimal Use Cases: Best for eCommerce brands.
Testimonials and Proof Points: Klaviyo Elite Partner status; strong case studies demonstrating the impact of deep segmentation.
Constraints: The entry-level price point prevents smaller companies from being able to participate.
Technology Stack: Klaviyo only.
Pricing Structure: Minimum project size of $5,000, with the addition of a two-year price lock guarantee.
3. SmartMail
SmartMail measures everything with hard numbers. Their focus is on the delivery and retention of your automated sequences, using only hard numbers.
As a numbers-first company, they provide a strong return on investment for companies that require fast turnaround times.
Optimal Use Cases: Best for eCommerce brands.
Testimonials and Proof Points: SmartMail has sent over 11 billion emails across more than 150 retail companies, generating over $187 million in tracked revenue. They claim to have generated a 540% increase in revenue for some clients.
Constraints: With a high degree of automation, they may not have enough resources to provide manual, personalized campaign writing.
Pricing Structure: Pricing is typically in line with market rates, with fees generally falling within the range of $500 - $2,000 per month.
4. Chronos Agency
Chronos Agency focuses primarily on larger retention and lifecycle optimization projects for established international companies that want to scale their existing customer retention programs. They are designed for businesses that already have an existing customer base and are not set up for first-time users.
Chronos provides solid operational support to back up their pricing, as they have multiple data points from clients indicating a 35% increase in new clients, a 15% increase in their email open rates, and a 200%-300% increase in their average click-through rates.
The above data supports the best-practice use of advanced email strategies by companies already in place.
Optimal Use Cases: Established international businesses that already have an existing customer base.
Testimonials and Proof Points: Multiple data points indicating a 35% increase in new clients, a 15% increase in open rates, and a 200%-300% increase in average click-through rates.
Constraints: A steep entry price makes them a poor fit for early-stage companies testing their first email sequences.
Technology Stack: Platform agnostic.
Pricing Structure: Minimum project size of $10,000 and hourly rates ranging from $100 to $149, depending on the individual's experience level.
5. Sweat Pants Agency
Sweat Pants Agency is not just an email marketing agency; they are a full-service marketing agency incorporating multiple channels into their marketing campaigns.
Sweat Pants focuses on return on ad spend (ROAS) and helps to keep customers engaged in the marketing process by sending targeted follow-up emails based on customers' ROAS. They have extensive experience working with retailers to increase customers' return on ad spend and maintain their return on investment by retaining their paid customers.
Optimal Use Cases: Retailers focused on maintaining return on investment and engaging paid customer cohorts.
Testimonials and Proof Points: Verified reports indicating positive ROAS and retention rates for customers who were paid to receive their email marketing campaign.
Constraints: As a mixed-media company focused primarily on ROAS, they do not perform well on the deep technical deliverability side, as there is much more to email marketing than just sending an email to customers.
Technology Stack: Uses many different tools and platforms to deliver services.
Pricing Structure: Customizes pricing models for clients based on their individual needs, requiring a minimum of $5,000 in project fees.
6. Rejoiner
Rejoiner is an advanced lifecycle marketing platform designed to assist companies in recovering lost revenue and sales when the customer abandons their shopping cart before completing the purchase.
Rejoiner's sole focus on cart abandonment recovery makes them an extremely effective solution for retail sites suffering from a high rate of cart abandonment or conversion loss. Rejoiner can help retailers identify their cart abandonment issues and return customers to their shopping carts by utilizing their tested behavior-based recovery triggers.
Optimal Use Cases: Best for eCommerce.
Testimonials and Proof Points: More than 10 years of experience strictly focused on abandoned cart recovery.
Constraints: The narrowness of their focus on abandoned carts may require you to find another vendor to help with your top-of-funnel newsletter campaigns.
Technology Stack: Platform agnostic.
Pricing Structure: Very affordable; hourly rates are in the range of $50-$99 per hour, and projects have a minimum of $1,000.
7. Hustler Marketing
Hustler Marketing utilizes a dedicated four-person team model for each of their clients' accounts. The company prides themselves on not using generic metrics to hide behind.
They make significant efforts internally to provide complete transparency on how much each message generates in revenue. This model allows managers to provide accountability for expense expenditures to their boards based on exact metrics.
Optimal Use Cases: Best for eCommerce and B2B.
Testimonials and Proof Points: Numerous strong client testimonials regarding accurate revenue attribution and transparency on how ads enter the revenue flow.
Constraints: The custom pricing model makes it difficult to forecast costs unless you speak directly to a salesperson for a quote.
Technology Stack: Platform agnostic.
Pricing Structure: Minimum project size is $5,000.
8. Soap Media
Soap Media is a full-service omnichannel digital agency, with email included as a component of their overall digital business strategy.
If you need your data to integrate with your search and inbound campaigns across a large enterprise system, they are the ideal solution.
Optimal Use Cases: Best for B2B and enterprise.
Testimonials and Proof Points: Ranked the best for client satisfaction by The Drum UK in 2021; Premier Google Partner, and Certified HubSpot Partner.
Constraints: Being a full-service digital agency means that email is only part of the overall agency; it is not their sole focus.
Technology Stack: HubSpot and Google.
Pricing Structure: Projects begin at $5,000, with hourly rates ranging from $100 to $149.
9. Audience Serv
Most companies spend the majority of their time trying to retain their existing customers, while Audience Serv offers their customers a way to acquire new customers on a global basis through the use of its proprietary software called the LiveSend algorithm to generate valuable leads.
Thus, if your primary goal is to perform cold outreach and penetrate new geographical markets, having access to this technical infrastructure will give you an enormous competitive advantage.
Optimal Use Cases: Best suited for B2B companies and enterprise-level companies.
Testimonials and Proof Points: Documented case studies that show how companies that use their platform experience direct sales increases of as much as 63%.
Constraints: Restrictions on cold acquisition based on strict compliance to regulations and an increased risk of being flagged as spam. Therefore, continual monitoring and technical support are required to ensure a successful email operation.
Technology Stack: A unique and proprietary technology called the LiveSend algorithm for automating written communication.
Pricing Structure: Based on custom-created budgets with international pricing in mind.
10. The Email Marketers
The Email Marketers offer a completely different pricing strategy, which is strictly based on the size of the retailers they work with. Their dedication to creating thoughtful, elaborate automation workflows which produce substantial results on a large scale differentiates them from the competition.
For example, if a retailer has the ability to process tens of thousands of orders monthly, a small error in segmentation can have a devastating impact and cost the retailer thousands. They exist to manage the high-risk nature of operating a large-scale eCommerce business.
- Optimal Use Cases: Ideal for enterprise-level companies whose revenue from eCommerce sales exceeds $10 million.
- Testimonials and Proof Points: Numerous verified estimates citing massive returns on investment (ROI) from their services along with highly elaborate flow architecture.
- Constraints: The extreme cost associated with employing the service; therefore, they only work with large-scale retail businesses that are well established.
- Technology Stack: Agnostic to other providers, as they work with many different platforms (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo guidelines mapping).
- Pricing Structure: Strictly based on custom quotes; therefore, they do not publish their hourly rates publicly.
Questions to Ask Potential Email Marketing Agencies
What is the risk of migrating from your existing Email Service Provider (ESP)?
Transferring from your current ESP (e.g., Mailchimp) to Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign is not a simple process of just copying and pasting your content. To achieve successful results with email marketing, you must first build your email reputation through an effective IP warming strategy. This is critical for your email marketing success.
To build a great reputation with your email service providers, you must use the right tools and techniques to accomplish this goal. IP warming can only be successful if you approach it with a clear understanding of your business, your marketing goals, and your email marketing services. You need to build an email reputation over time by using effective metrics to measure success, including the number of emails opened, link clicks, opt-ins, and generated leads.
There is much that can go wrong during a poorly managed migration to a new email service provider. Your email marketing efforts are at risk of suffering from serious downtime. If your email marketing efforts are not prepared properly, they will typically not deliver the expected results.
Why do many companies inaccurately report revenue attribution?
Many companies will attempt to take full credit for a sale that they know was already going to take place. Companies will often assign lengthy periods of time to their revenue attribution window. For example, a company may state that an email message opened five days ago was responsible for generating today's sales.
The only way a company can accurately track true incremental revenue generated by their vendor is by requiring holdout tests. Holdout tests must include a control group that does not receive any emails along with an active list of contacts that do receive messages.
What types of operational risks occur as a result of separating creative copy from deliverability technology?
The combination of compelling copy and dazzling design will not provide you with the greatest return on your investment in email marketing unless the intended recipient of the email actually receives the email in their inbox.
Without the proper collaboration between your design team and your technical team, your creative copy and your stunning design will be rendered totally useless, and your email marketing operation will experience a complete breakdown of the entire campaign.
How can the changes in marketing velocity and spam filters affect how you execute your email campaigns?
With the enforcement of stricter rules for bulk email senders by major mailbox providers (e.g., Gmail and Yahoo), the old days of bulk-send automation that blindly blasted every subscriber on your list with the same email message are over.
Today's email marketers must segment their lists based on subscription and activity levels, and their operational procedures must continually monitor and purge inactive subscribers. If your vendor is not regularly monitoring your lists and purging inactive users, your deliverability rates will drop.
Stop Outsourcing Your Software Learning Curve
Stop wasting money on outsourcing the learning curve of your software stack. Are you measuring true incremental revenue from the vendor, or are you simply paying for credit on sales that were already planned? Demand definitive, statistical proof of inbox placement along with strict holdout tests as a condition of signing any contracts.