Email consultants come in all shapes and sizes. Some are small one man shops and some are a team inside of a big media firm. And these days you’ll find most all companies have good testimonials.
But when it comes time to bring in some email consultants to help you produce better programs, increase optin rates, generate more leads, write some compelling copy or just tune up your email marketing strategies you might want to ask a few questions to make sure they are the right company for you.
Here’s what you should expect from your email consultants.
1. Expect them to get to know your business. I don’t think they necessarily have to know your industry in intimate detail but when they work with you they should want to know YOUR business intimately. How do they get to know your customers, your products, your messaging, your sales process, or your current marketing strategies?
2. Expect them to know email marketing. Seem obvious doesn’t it? What constitutes ‘knowing’ email marketing? Is it having a login ID for Constant Contact or is it having sent over 1,000 campaigns in the past year? It’ll make a difference.
3. Expect them to be responsive. Sometimes things need to be done fast. Find out what kind of responsiveness to expect. We commit ourselves to taking client calls when we can or returning all calls within 24 hours.
4. Expect them to use best practices themselves. Did you sign up for their list? The best test in my mind is to check out the email autoresponders you receive from them. Do they even use them? If so, are they well written? Do the provide useful information?
5. Expect them to be good marketers. Do they believe in testing, good copy, headlines, clear calls-to-action, targeted messaging, list segmentation, and other good marketing-speak? Good marketers are probably more valuable to you than good email html coders. (I was going to say good programmers but I think a good programmer is worth their weight in gold!)
6. Expect them to believe in ROI. Return On Investment (ROI) is a cornerstone of email marketing and your email consultants should think so too. Keeping an eye on ROI means you’ll keep focused on the use of your time and money for effective email campaigns.
BONUS Skill. If your email consultant has a good handle on what a sales process is and how to integrate email into one, you’ll want to pay careful attention.
