Agency Tips, Email Marketing

Why Your Agency Should Upsell Email Marketing to Clients

Digital marketing agencies offer many services like PPC management, web development, social media marketing and a variety of other valuable services. It’s high time you added email marketing services to your arsenal if you haven’t already.

Let’s look at why and how you can successfully up-sell email marketing services to your clients, deliver consistent results, and establish a new revenue stream for your agency.

Why your customers need email marketing

According to a 2018 Radicati Group study, there will be more than 3.8 billion email users before the start of 2019, over 100 million more than the previous year. In other words, over half of the planet’s population uses email right now.

email-marketing-to-b2b

Also, 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation.

With Google and Facebook’s cost per clicks skyrocketing each year, email marketing proves to be a cost-effective marketing strategy for any client in any industry (especially when working with budget restraints).

So, email ain’t dead. And, more importantly, your customers can harness its power, with your help.

So, why should you up-sell email marketing?

As an agency, it’s likely that you offer your clients a variety of services. They probably turn to you for web design, social media marketing, SEO/ PPC and maybe even logo design.  Such services are the cornerstone of most digital marketing agencies, but they all suffer from the same problems:

  1. They are all usually, project-based in nature. That’s a one-time influx of revenue which can come without prior warning and vanish quickly once the final invoice is sent.
  2. Client budget is too low to effectively provide services like SEO/ PPC.
  3. Social media continues to get more expensive and cluttered as everyone fights for online attention.
  4. Issues scaling campaigns for generating more traffic and leads while creating up-selling and cross-selling opportunities for products and services. And finally (not so much of a problem) your agency never thought about selling email marketing as a service.

The dynamics of the digital marketing landscape changes rapidly. Your agency could face these challenges in the future, if not now.

Just for perspective, let’s flip the table to see what the top marketing challenges faced by brands are.

brands-top-marketing-challenges

The top three marketing challenges faced by brands are most likely the same challenges faced far too often by agencies across the board.

Now is probably the right time to answer the two most important questions that you may have.

Will my clients see results from email marketing?

The Vision6 Metrics report tells us the average email open rate for all industries across Australia is around 34%. Check your industry’s average open rate against the overall market using the Vision6 industry metrics calculator. Higher open rates mean more eyes to your content. But does it mean more ROI?

The average ROI of email marketing is the highest of all the marketing activities. The ROI for email marketing is $40 for every $1 that you spend on email marketing (on average).

email-roi-graph

Your clients may be spending a significant portion of their resources and marketing budget on social media marketing. But with email marketing typically enjoying 50-100 times the click rates of Facebook and Twitter, they’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

Worse still, they may be lamenting the amount of money they’re spending on paid advertising like Google Ads each month.

Finally, you can prove that it doesn’t have to be like this!

By offering email marketing to your clients, you can help reduce their marketing overheads, increase leads and raise the average value of confirmed orders.

Although social media still gets a lot of attention and is a great marketing platform, email marketing is in many ways a much more effective way for your clients to market their businesses.

Moreover, it consistently converts both new customers and repeat business in both B2B or B2C companies.

traffic-graph-b2b-and-b2c

Not to mention, our fellow marketers rate email as one of the top performing digital marketing channels out there, if not the best.

email-marketing-roi

By offering email marketing as a service, you can help clients get the kind of results that will make them want to work with you again and again.

Will this increase my agency’s margin?

Since 1992, the average price for creative agency deliverables has declined by 70% in today’s dollars, according to the research [1] by Madison Avenue Manslaughter.

I’m not saying it’s all doom and gloom, but I’m a firm believer in trends and always let the data do the talking. To generate growing margins, agencies had to cut costs per deliverable at a rate greater than the 70% price decline.

A key factor influencing these declining margins, especially for boutique agencies, is the need to downsize and juniorise staff to cut costs. Needing to spend more time and money to win new clients and projects, as well as growing competition due to freelancers and cheap services also contributed.

With email marketing, you could work with your clients on an ongoing basis and earn revenue every month they engage in email marketing. This helps you focus on working on serious projects, deliver high-quality work for your clients with peace of mind.

Why Vision6?

A great place to offer additional services is to use a powerful email marketing solution like Vision6 which provides a 10% discount to agencies if they choose to become a reseller.

Reseller means that you can sell the platform as your own and allows you to markup prices or bill your clients at a discounted rate to build better relationships with your agency. Simply sign up for an agency account, reskin the Vision6 product to your branding, and sell on to your clients at a price you both agree upon.

And with a 10% discounted wholesale price to you, the margins enjoyed by your agency start nice and healthy. Your agency has the power to manage every one of your clients’ accounts and restrict or upsell features.

How closely you work with your clients and how hands-on you are with their email campaigns is completely up to you. So controlling the margins on this revenue stream is extremely easy, and it can be as passive an income as you want it to be.

Some agencies have easily carved out a successful passive revenue stream through the reselling of Vision6.

A case study on email marketing:

Johnny Rockets partnered with Ripe Solutions for marketing, digital and creative assistance to launch their brand in Australia. Their aim was to drive awareness and traffic for the first store opening in Fortitude Valley,  Brisbane, Queensland, laying the foundation for future store openings.

jonny-rockets-email-case-study

Ripe Solutions did some brilliant campaigns for Jonny Rockets and got outstanding results utilising Vision6 for database management, sign-ups and emails as part of this campaign.

Here are the results:

  • Clear brand positioning established showing increased brand awareness and record sales achieved exceeding all targets!
  • Outstanding digital results achieved; key highlights were:
    • 200,000+ people reached and 1,000,000+ content impressions served
    • 1500+ clicks via search advertising with 500+ people requesting directions to the store
    • 20,000+ visitors to the Johnny Rockets website
    • 1000+ database sign ups

Final Thoughts

Digital marketing agencies offer a plethora of services such as web design, social media marketing, SEO/ PPC and logo design.  It’s time your agency considered upselling email marketing to your clients for the following reasons:

  • Solves the top three marketing challenges faced by brands and agencies i.e., generating traffic and leads, proving ROI and scaling campaigns.
  • Proves to be a cost-effective marketing strategy for any client in any industry (especially when working with budget restraints).
  • Helps to reduce the marketing overheads for clients, increase leads and raise the average value of confirmed orders.
  • Increases overall margins for your agency and can become a consistent source of revenue.

Your agency can use Vision6 as a Partner or a Reseller and get 10% discounted wholesale price. Controlling the margins on the revenue stream also gets easier as a re-seller. Upsell the platform as your own, markup prices on your own terms or bill your clients at a discounted rate to build better relationships with your agency. Enjoy VIP support for you and your clients.

Join hundreds of agencies from around the world.

Create a free account today as a Vision6 Agency Partner or Reseller and contact our friendly support staff for any further information.

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