Whether you’re an experienced email marketer or a newcomer to the field, one consensus remains: emails can be time-consuming. From brainstorming and crafting content to production, design, and execution, email marketing involves multiple steps that can span days, particularly for small businesses or teams. This is where outsourcing can play a pivotal role.
But, if email marketing is an integral part of your business strategy, how can you streamline your production cycle?
A great way to simplify and streamline your email marketing efforts is by outsourcing!
Outsourcing is choosing and hiring a third-party provider (like DIDO Agency) to assist with your email marketing, whether that’s having them manage implementation and analytics or allowing them to take over the entire production cycle. Outsourcing even small portions of your production cycle can significantly reduce your team’s commitment to email marketing, giving your business back its time, energy, and resources.
But how do you know when to outsource? Great question!
When you’re evaluating your own email marketing production cycle, look for these “red flags” that indicate it’s time to consider outsourcing. Read on to explore our list of warning signs, and keep tabs on how many your business is showing. Let’s go!
1. You’re spending more time on email than you can afford.
It’s not a bad thing to put time and effort into an email campaign, but a red flag starts to go up when you’re spending more time on emails than you actually have to offer. If you’re starting early, staying late, and working overtime every week just to finish your campaigns… it might be time to outsource.
2. Your email campaigns are constantly deployed late.
As a marketing professional, you’re probably used to using content calendars to help you schedule your campaigns. But, when you’re doing everything yourself, it’s easy to get caught up in delays and last-minute changes. If you’re missing campaign dates more often than not… it might be time to outsource.
3. You’re over-training instead of seeking outside expertise.
Whether your team is full of specialists or generalists, encouraging personal development is a huge green flag. However, when you start training your coders to be copywriters, and your designers to be analysts to fill gaps in your team’s knowledge, that green flag turns red. If you’re over-training your team outside of their scope instead of just seeking an external expert… it might be time to outsource.
4. Your list-building tactics just aren’t working.
Sometimes even the best marketing strategy can fall flat, especially if you’re stretching yourself thin across different areas of email marketing. If your list isn’t growing at the rate you want it to, or you just don’t have the time to continue testing and trying new tactics… it might be time to outsource.
5. You’re struggling to keep up with industry trends.
In this day and age, new technologies are coming out constantly; it can be hard for anyone to keep up! If you’re spreading your attention across the entire email marketing production cycle and simply don’t have the capacity to keep up with the latest and greatest in the field… it might be time to outsource.
6. Your spam complaints and bounce rate are too high.
Email deliverability is complicated to wrap your head around, especially if you’re not well-versed in spam compliance (because, realistically, you probably don’t need to be!). But, if you’re finding your spam complaints and bounce rates are growing beyond your scope of expertise… it might be time to outsource.
7. You don’t have enough time during peak season.
A busy peak season is ideal for many businesses, allowing you to anticipate and plan for influxes and lulls in your income. However, if your team can’t keep up with the increased demand for email marketing during peak season… it might be time to outsource.
8. Your campaigns and workflows are getting more complicated.
Maybe you want to segment your audience in a complicated way, or maybe you want to try a crazy new campaign animation. Either way, if your email marketing goals are increasing in complexity and outgrowing your in-house capabilities…it might be time to outsource.
Wrap Up
Email marketing requires an intimate understanding of practices from lead generation and HTML coding to A/B testing, copywriting, and analytics. It’s not a bad thing if your team can’t do it all…or just doesn’t want to! Outsourcing can save you time, spare you stress, and ultimately save you money. After all, hiring an external agency is cheaper than transforming your existing marketing team into email experts.
If your team is suffering from any of these red flags, your email marketing goals are expanding, and the requirements for your strategy are extending further and further beyond your capabilities… it might be time to outsource to someone like us!
DIDO Agency is your all-in-one email marketing agency, offering email template production, automation, campaign management, data integration or migration, and more.
So… ready to lessen your workload? Let us help with that.