Email marketing is a powerful tool for your agency.
You can use it to get in front of new potential leads or to drive improved results for your existing clients.
However, there’s so much information out there when it comes to email marketing that it can be hard to find actionable ways to get started.
In this article, I’ll show you the benefits of using email marketing at your agency, and then show you actionable email marketing tactics you can implement today.
Why use email marketing at your agency?
Sixty-four percent of B2B marketers say that their email marketing strategy helps them hit their business goals.
It’s a powerful way to:
- Stay in touch with your existing clients
- Reach out to new potential clients
- Help you hit your client goals (depending on your agency services)
However, most agencies don’t use the channel to its full potential. If you take the time to understand how email can work for your agency and put those learnings into practice, you’ll quickly start seeing results and have a competitive advantage.
Types of email marketing tactics you can use
1. Inbound email
The first main type of email marketing agencies can use is inbound email.
Inbound email marketing refers to how you use email to communicate with your existing email list.
Examples of how you could use email marketing to engage with your existing list include:
- Sending a weekly newsletter with tips and best practices to help your audience’s business
- Having a 5-step email sequence designed to guide new email list subscribers into booking a call with your team
- Automatically sending emails when clients pay their invoices with next steps
Your email list subscribers and existing clients check their inboxes throughout the day, so it’s a powerful way to stay in touch and keep your agency on their minds.
2. Outbound email
The second type of email marketing strategy you can test is outbound email.
This is any email you send to someone who you haven’t previously been in touch with.
Examples of outbound emails you can send include:
- Sending cold emails to sales prospects who are a good fit for your services
- Running a PR outreach campaign to build awareness for a client brand
- Reaching out to other agency owners to build partnerships
Outbound email can be a difficult channel to use because you’re reaching out to cold recipients—but if you can figure out how to use it, it can be a powerful way to grow your agency.
4 email marketing ideas to help get results for your agency
1. Use cold email to get more agency clients
The first email marketing initiative you can try at your agency is cold email. It’s one of the most powerful ways to build a healthy pipeline of clients because you can reach out directly to decision-makers and have a one-to-one conversation.
So, how does the process work?
First, you’ll need to run a sales prospecting process. You’ll use tools like LinkedIn and ZoomInfo to create a list of qualified prospects that match the type of client you work with at your agency.
Once you’ve created a prospect list that includes details like your prospect’s name, company, and any other information you need, you can then import these prospects into a cold email platform like QuickMail.
You can use your cold email tool to automatically send multi-step email outreach campaigns to your prospects, without needing to send each email by hand.
Example screenshot of QuickMail Campaign Mission Control
If someone doesn’t reply to your first email, you can automatically follow up with them, which is a powerful way to increase your response rate.
Over time, you’ll start to see replies come in, and all you need to do is continue the conversation.
We’d recommend creating a sales dashboard to track your results—your cold email tool might have one, or you can create a custom dashboard in a tool like Excel or Google Sheets. This will give you and your team a clear understanding of how many opens, replies, and new opportunities your cold email campaigns generate for your agency.
2. Use PR outreach to boost client brand awareness
PR outreach is typically used to generate more views and awareness for your agency clients’ brands through earned media.
Effective PR outreach can help you:
- Land features in top publications
- Build links back to key client website pages
- Generate new business and ROI for clients
Email works so well for PR because you can reach out directly to editors and journalists who work for the outlets you want your brand or client featured in, with a completely personalized pitch.
First, you’ll need to build a list of journalists to reach out to. Agility PR Solutions’ media database can help you quickly identify journalists and influencers who will be interested in your pitch.
Example contact profile from Agility PR Solutions’ media database
In your pitch, make sure to:
- Use a clear and specific subject line
- Use personalization to show each recipient why your story is a perfect fit for their publication
- Follow-up if they don’t initially reply
As a best practice, it’s also best to avoid including attachments in your PR outreach emails. They can harm email deliverability, so wait until your contact replies to send any extra assets over.
It’s also vital to set clear KPIs for your PR outreach—this will set a benchmark for your team and help you evaluate success.
3. Stay in touch and unlock revenue from your existing clients
Email marketing to your existing customer base is an excellent way to upsell and add new revenue streams to your business.
Your existing client base is one of your best sources of new revenue—if you can successfully upsell to them.
First, you’ll need to stay in touch with them. One of the best ways to do that is by sending a regular newsletter. Even if it’s once every two weeks, they’ll see your agency’s name in their inbox and will trust that you’re going to send them valuable content that can help them solve a problem in their business.
You can also use these newsletters to add a soft pitch about other services that your agency offers.
For example, if you run a PR agency and have clients working with you to build exposure from media publications, you might be able to upsell them with a package to help them gain exposure from relevant influencers on social media platforms as well.
This is effective because you don’t need to identify new clients and sell to them in order to add new revenue to your agency. You can tap into a base of people who already trust you and know that you can deliver results.
4. Automatically send emails based on actions your clients take
Email is the best way to keep your clients up-to-date and keep them in the loop about what’s happening on their account.
It’s the best channel for handling tasks like:
- Automatically emailing them when a new invoice is due
- Sending them an update on their campaign status
- Reminding them that they have to provide you with key details before you launch a campaign
Luckily, it’s easy to automate email processes like these.
For example, a workflow automation tool to send clients an automated email if you add a new update to their Google Sheets campaign tracker.
Or you could automatically send email sequences based on the status of a potential client in your sales CRM to move them through your funnel and turn them into a customer.
Email marketing workflows like these are a powerful way to communicate with your agency clients to keep them up to date on everything going on in their account.
Wrapping up
Email marketing can help your agency improve how you communicate with existing clients, and help you start conversations with new prospective clients.
The email marketing strategies we’ve looked at in this guide are all going to drive results for your agency in some way, whether it’s improved productivity, or accelerating your lead generation efforts.
When implementing a new email marketing initiative, make sure to set KPIs, then measure your results against them. Over time, you’ll figure out what moves the needle for your unique agency and can double down to help your company grow.
