Although email might not be the hottest topic as of late, it remains one of the most effective marketing channels. For every $1 spent on it, you can expect a $36 ROI, compared to ~$4 ROI, generally recognized as the hurdle for good marketing investment!
So, what’s the catch?
Putting together a quality mailing list, executing a successful campaign, and migrating to a marketing automation platform to coordinate email, SMS, call, in-app messaging can all be tricky businesses.
Thankfully, that’s where the professionals come in – digital marketing agencies specializing in email marketing. In this article, we have selected the best of the best.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 1990
Location: Grapevine, Texas, USA
Number of employees: 51 – 200
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Founded by one of the pioneers in email marketing, Inbox Army offers a full range of email services. It is 100% ESP-agnostic and has a proven track record of serving over 5000 clients globally in over 25 industries and verticals.
Inbox Army works with brands of all sizes, agencies, and email service providers to deliver best-in-class service, from production to ongoing support.
They support over 50 ESP vendors, and their team is capable of building, deploying, and managing email marketing campaigns at scale.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2013
Location: San Francisco, California, USA (with global presence)
Number of employees: 501 – 1000
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Email Uplers offers a powerful solution with a team exceeding 150 email experts. They’ve tackled campaigns for big brands, showcasing their ability to handle intricate needs and deliver results.
What sets them apart is their focus on efficiency. They assign dedicated resources to work seamlessly alongside your team. They also champion modular design and automation. This means crafting reusable email templates that save time and resources in the long run.
Global reach is another perk. With a worldwide presence, their dedicated teams can operate in your time zone, fostering smooth communication and quicker turnaround times.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2004
Location: Preston and Manchester, UK
Number of employees: 11 – 50
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Soap Media is a digital marketing agency that offers 13 years of experience in conducting email marketing. They have a dedicated team of email marketing experts, that focus on compiling and managing cost-effective email campaigns for all of their clients.
In terms of accreditations, they are a Premier Google Partner and a Certified HubSpot Partner.
In addition, Soap Media offer other digital marketing services, including digital consulting, designing and development. So if you’re interested in seeing what they offer, they also provide free consultations.
“Email marketing has an ROI potential of 4400%”
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2017
Location: London, UK
Number of employees: 11 – 50
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM
The Good Marketer is a small, innovative digital marketing agency that mainly works with small—to medium-sized businesses. While they offer a range of different marketing services, they also specialize in developing high-quality and unique email marketing strategies.
This agency provides a team of email experts who take the time to understand a client’s business, as well as what type of interaction their customers enjoy the most.
They then develop an email marketing campaign that suits the needs of the business, as well as the desires of the customers. They refer to this as maximizing the “conversion-optimized funnel.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2011
Location: Newport, Rhode Island, USA
Number of employees: 11 – 50
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Rejoiner is a dedicated agency based in the United States. When it comes to providing expert advice and guidance in the world of email marketing, these guys definitely know what they’re talking about.
Rejoiner is known for always taking a very ‘hands-on’ approach and offers a range of email software, tools, and marketing tactics for all their clients.
They also work for many types and sizes of businesses while also focusing on developing email solutions for e-commerce companies.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 1998
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Number of employees: 11 – 50
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Fulcrum Tech is a full-service agency known for delivering high-quality and unique end-to-end email marketing programs for a wide range of industries.
From email designers, copywriters, coders, analyzers, marketing experts, developers, and project managers, they’re all involved in meeting the needs of their clients.
They are also certified partners with Hubspot, Salesforce, and Listrak.
In addition, Fulcrum Tech provides its clients with technology for email analytics, as well as an email ROI optimization tool.
According to their client reviews, they are known for delivering top, interactive email marketing content and great email newsletters in industries such as finance, publishing, healthcare, and mobile.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2017
Location: New York City, USA and Tel Aviv, Israel
Number of employees: 11-50
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Since 2017 Mayple has been connecting businesses with expert marketers to make the most of their marketing potential and grow their businesses.
Mayple has over 50 email marketing experts who can take care of every aspect of your email marketing, from end to end.
All their marketing experts are thoroughly vetted and verified, ensuring that the services they provide you are based on a quantifiable track record and not just a slick sales pitch.
They work with clients of all sizes across a wide range of industries, focusing on connecting each unique business with the perfect marketers to meet their unique goals.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2008
Location: Berlin and Munich, Germany. Barcelona, Spain. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Singapore. Hanoi, Vietnam.
Number of employees: 51 – 200
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Audience Serv has helped businesses all over the world with email retargeting, programmatic email marketing, email reporting, and lead generation strategies.
Audience Serv is an international agency that specializes in acquiring customers for businesses using targeted data-driven marketing They are one of the best when it comes to direct customer marketing, striving to keep their strategies within your immediate budget. From defining your ideal audience, their expert team will then develop a unique email marketing campaign that strives to meet the preferences of your audience.
They also offer specialized email re-targeting campaigns and other messaging contact methods to target customers.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2013
Location: United States
Number of employees: 1 – 10
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM?
SmartMail is a specialized, e-commerce-focused agency known for delivering high-quality trigger-based email campaigns.
Their team of experts literally lives and breathes email marketing and consists of professionals in strategy, design, coding, and client success.
While they are e-commerce specialists, they also offer their services to companies in other sectors.
In addition, SmartMail provides effective email campaigns to brands throughout a customer’s lifecycle. Such initiatives include compiling welcome emails, cart abandonment follow-ups, post-purchases, replenishment, and win-back campaigns.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2005
Location: London, UK
Number of employees: 11 – 50
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM?
MailNinja is an agency and Mailchimp Partner based in the UK. With more than 14 years of experience, they focus on developing email strategies and programs for small businesses.
This dynamic agency offers innovative email campaigns and aims to deliver powerful email marketing results for its clients. From the start, they assign you a dedicated campaign manager, who will be there to kick off your email marketing campaign and guide you through the whole process.
MailNinja also offers different payment structures and campaign types that will suit your business objectives and budget plans.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2016
Location: Melbourne, Perth, Gold Coast, Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Canberra, and Adelaide, Australia
Number of employees: 11 – 50
KEY SERVICES
NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS
WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Xugar is a growth-focused digital agency with a team of highly skilled email experts. They provide digital marketing, experience creation services, and creative design in both media and the web.
If you have an existing email list and want to use it or expand it, they will assist you in reaching your goals each step of the way. You can also get them to run an entire email campaign for you, from content creation to outreach and follow-up.
In addition, Xugar offers other services such as SEO, PPC / Google Ads, social media, and B2B marketing solutions.
Summary: The Best Agencies Specialized in Email Marketing Are:
An email agency is a specialized group of digital marketers who focus on email channel strategy and executions. Some common services can include below.
This is how email as a channel fits into your overall marketing mix.
It often starts from your email list analysis – customer segmenation based on channel engagement (openers, lapsed, etc.). Depending on how your email list overlaps your overall customer database, you might want to hone in on email acquisition within your existing customers, or focus on promotional emails to deliver targeted coupons to bring back lapsed shoppers.
The beauty of email is you own the closed-loop data. You know exactly who you reached, how they responded to the email and your products and services, and the campaign ROI, all important email marketing metrics.
Having an email on file also highly correlates to the customer’s lifetime value. Therefore, your email data will give you a wealth of your customer insights. A good email marketing company would help you with that process.
Agencies can help optimize your existing campaigns and introduce new ones based on your past customer engagement data. They can include promotional campaigns, transactional emails, content marketing emails, etc.
A good agency will help you set up your reporting and analysis cadence, so your email channel can evolve into a continuous learning cycle.
This involves a full evaluation of your current Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This is where your customer contact data lives, to enable email, call, in-app, SMS marketing.
A good agency would advise on the latest technologies in the field, help you evaluate what fits your size and needs. They could also help you with migration and integration to see you on the right path to achieve seamless direct channel coordination.
Let’s take a look at this video by LYFE Marketing to see what email marketing actually entails to get an idea of what an agency can do for you:
There is a great deal of marketing generalists out there today, where some agencies will offer email marketing as just an add-on marketing service.
They specialize in the B2B marketing environment and in B2B campaigns. They will personalize your email tactics to engage with audiences in this space.
They are a fantastic option for B2B businesses because they understand your exact needs, and can communicate with high-valued sales reps, target profitable accounts, and create content highlighting the most essential aspects of your product and brand.
Like B2B, B2C agencies focus only on B2C email campaigns. You can work with these agencies to understand how to attract and engage targeted consumers. They will also determine the best frequency to promote content via email, the kind of content to market, and how to communicate your value proposition and branding.
B2C agencies will also develop custom lead generation strategies. You can count on these firms to create targeted customer segments and help you build personal buyer relationships through email content.
You can work with these firms if you need more than just email marketing. Perhaps you also need content creation, social media marketing, and specialized lead generation services. A full-service agency offers all of this and acts as a 360-degree marketing solution.
Working with this type of agency is beneficial because you can rely on one platform to achieve your objectives, making it easier to streamline your marketing efforts between all channels, including email.
They develop automated campaigns, like drip or triggered campaigns. For example, if a customer joins your email list, these agencies can set an event-triggered welcome message. New subscribers are automatically introduced to your business and what you offer. Consider these agencies for when you have a series of campaigns that follow a customer’s lifecycle.
These agencies are an effective solution for high-volume email lists because you don’t have to send newsletters for every trigger action. They may also have tools for AI email copywriting and automated lead generation.
Gaining leads for your email campaign takes a lot of time and effort. Fortunately, email acquisition firms specialize in this! These agencies help businesses acquire targeted leads through tailored strategies.
Your agency will develop a sound acquisition campaign and guide your business to maximize its awareness and leads. With extensive experience acquiring high-quality leads, these firms know how to pinpoint your targeted subscribers and reach them through the right content. Because these firms take a specialized approach to acquiring leads and nothing else, they make a worthwhile investment to accelerate your lead gen.
Although these agencies are a little uncommon compared to the rest, you might find yourself needing one! Email advertising agencies are all about advertising through email marketing. These firms will help you rent email lists, land publication features, and create content personalized to your campaign objectives and target audience.
Email advertising is tricky, and to be successful, you must know how to manage your expenses, target the right subscribers, design your content, and share your brand voice and values. You can make this much easier by working with agencies that will handle all these aspects for you while tracking and measuring your campaigns.
Developing, running, maintaining, tracking, and measuring campaigns with massive send volumes is incredibly challenging. Not only do you need a huge, experienced team and a well-equipped email suite, but you also need to be diligent in maintaining the lists.
These specialized agencies can clean up your email lists, segment subscribers for targeted content, plan and create quality content, and track and measure analytics to draw actionable insights. They can also develop lifecycle campaigns to revive unengaged emails.
Unlike others, these agencies are often brought in as the service team when you purchase email marketing software.
An excellent example is MailChimp. Businesses can hire professional service teams specializing in MailChimp to run campaigns, manage and maintain contacts, and connect campaigns to their eCommerce platform, among many other services.
So, where do we go from here?
Before you approach any agencies, it’s best to gather all the email lists you have on hand and to make sure you have everything available and ready for them to access when needed.
Then put together a set of clear objectives for your email campaign or program.
Chances are they will highlight some even greater opportunities available to you that you might not have seen or recognized before.
Then step out and get in touch with an agency that grabs your attention the most.
When you start using email marketing the way it’s supposed to be used – well, let’s just say you’ll never look back!
It is a specialized group of marketers and developers who focus on the email marketing channel for their clients. The services offered could range from email acquisition strategy to CRM platform implementation.
We recommend Inbox Army, Email Uplers, Mayple, Soap Media, SmartMail, MailNinja, and Audience Serv.
Check our agency selection guide for a breakdown of different sub-types of email services. There are nuances to look for in each.
Email is most likely one of your highest ROI marketing channels, given how cheap the CPM (cost per thousand) is compared to, for example, paid digital display. However, the cost of acquisition could be high when you include the additional site development and data infrastructure costs.
HubSpot: What is Email Marketing?
Clutch: Top 100 Email Marketing Agencies
The Manifest: Top 100 Email Marketing Companies