Everything you need to price, package and sell email marketing
Digital marketing agencies offer a world of expertise to their clients but they’re also under constant pressure to deliver more with less and keep revenues trending ever upwards.
Over the years, we’ve seen an increase in one-off project assignments and downward pressure in fees. To keep up, agency staff are working harder often for the same rewards while having to continually source new clients to justify their existence.
Adding email marketing to your list of services provides agencies with an additional and consistent revenue stream and a better way to win and retain clients. With email marketing, agencies can grow faster, their clients grow bigger and it’s super easy to do.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to package, price and sell email marketing services that can:
- Increase revenue from existing clients
- Keep existing clients longer by offering more value
- Create more predictability in your revenue with recurring monthly fees
- Attract new clients generating more top-line revenue
Why Sell Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a proven workhorse that generates new revenue streams for your agency while supercharging your clients’ campaigns.
Email has Unmatched Reach
According to Statista, email marketing is going from strength to strength, with the number of global email users set to grow to 4.48 billion in 2024. And it’s reach is estimated to be at 85% compared to social media at 58%. It hasn’t stopped getting results either. Over the past 12 months, 80% of marketers reported an increase in email engagement believing that email marketing increases customer retention with another 59% saying it’s their biggest source of ROI.
Boost Your Revenue
There’s no denying the benefit of adding email marketing to your stack and there’s a ton of ways it can generate additional and recurring revenue for your agency.
Retain Clients by Adding More Value
Two of the biggest pain points we hear from agencies is the struggle to transition clients from a one-off project to a retainer and the declining margins from having to constantly acquire new clients.
Unlike a website or billboard design that are generally one-off projects, email marketing allows your agency to retain clients and gain revenue every time you send a campaign. Adding email marketing services to your stack instantly increases the value you offer to clients. You can introduce email nurture campaigns to push conversions, grow brand awareness and engagement with a monthly newsletter, or reduce CAC while increasing conversions with remarketing.
Secure Recurring Revenue with Email Marketing
Vision6 allows agencies to markup prices and bill your clients directly for the services you provide them. That means you can earn revenue for every email campaign your clients send. Plus, you can also brand your dashboard with your own unique branding, backed by Australia’s most reliable email and SMS marketing platform. It’s the most trusted way Australian agencies secure recurring revenue and it’s super easy to do.
How to Package and Price Email Marketing Services
There are numerous services and assets related to email marketing that you can offer and we’ll go through these later on in the guide.
Firstly you’ll want to decide how to package these services in a way that works best for you and your clients. These package types aren’t one-size-fits-all and we have plenty of agencies that provide a combination based on specific client needs. Here are some examples to give you an idea of how you may package yours.
Full Service Bundle
Package
You can offer the whole kit and caboodle for your clients that know the power of email marketing but don’t have the resources or inclination to do it themselves. This could include all of the email services, from email marketing strategy, to setting up lists, email design, landing pages, signup forms and sending campaigns, to regular reporting on success.
Price
This package works best with a monthly fee. Vision6 agencies charge depending on the number of campaigns run, list sizes and included hours for copy, creative, strategic advice and reporting. The benefit of this package is securing a recurring revenue that you can rely on.
Hourly
Package
Almost all Vision6 agencies offer an hourly rate in addition to their packaged services. The services at an hourly rate can be anything from data management to consulting to email design and reporting.
Price
Hourly rates work best with bespoke or one-off projects or where the client just needs extra help getting started. You can charge your standard hourly rate plus an add-on charge for the use of the platform.
Platform Only
Package
Some Vision6 agencies will also have clients who simply want to use the platform to execute their own email marketing program. From time to time these types of clients may also need some additional help in creating a new campaign or some other paid-for service. When you partner with Vision6 you have complete control of how your client can access the product based on preferences such as view only, edit, full admin rights.
And to give your clients a consistent brand experience, you can add your Agency branding to your Vision6 dashboard, knowing that you’re backed by Australia’s most reliable email and SMS marketing platform.
Price
With Vision6 the pricing for this is completely up to you and it’s as easy as selecting You Pay or Client Pays when setting up your client accounts. If you decide to pay, you have the freedom to charge whatever you want to your client. It’s important to keep your fees competitive, just make sure your markup is covering your time and investment.
Plus, check-in with them every six or 12 months to see if you can add value to their email marketing by updating their templates or reviewing their database. As part of being a partner, you receive a 18% off the RRP and your own free account from which to market yourself as well.
What Services to Offer in Your Packages
Once you’ve set your package and price categories, let’s talk about the services you can offer.
Email Marketing Strategy
You’ve got the marketing expertise, so step your clients through the process of establishing goals, objectives and KPIs for email marketing. Identify how the email campaigns can be used as part of an integrated marketing approach. Then identify the target market, the messaging and imagery, list of related assets, scheduling and key success measures. (See more about the best KPIs to track here.)
Grow & Maintain Lists
Managing lists can be one of the most time consuming and tricky elements of email marketing, so why not make your clients lives easier by taking it off their hands. (They’ll love you for it!) Start with an audit of their database, considering what type of contacts they have, how long they have been there and what their level of engagement is like.
Collate clients’ audiences. Vision6 has a range of integrations, meaning you can collect event registrations, e-commerce customers and database lists all in the one place. Help clients grow their lists by including a signup form on their website or through gated content.
Segment their database based on demographic, behavioural and geographic insight to help you both get a better understanding of the audience and boost their email results with segmented emails.
Design Email Templates
Email templates are a great inventory for growing loyalty and revenue! Custom design templates for your premium clients, or provide template packages for them to personalise.
If you’ve got the in-house expertise you can create unique HTML templates for your clients. If not, use an email platform, like Vision6, with a solid drag-and-drop editor to build the templates or customise the templates provided.
With an estimated 304 billion emails sent daily your clients’ emails need to stand out with good design! Make sure your email platform has all of the components to create any email you need, like paragraphs for your story-telling copy, clear and compelling call to actions, images to make eye-catching designs, and a one-step video component to boost click-through rates. Also, that you can easily add or create templates then share them into your client’s account.
(Get tips on great design or be inspired with beautiful email designs.)
Create Email Template Bundles
When creating your email templates, consider the email categories and how you could bundle your email templates. These could be sold as one-off packages or as services.
Newsletters
Marketers rate newsletters as the highest performer for securing and nurturing leads, and also a close second for converting leads!
If these are your client’s goals, then creating and sending a regular newsletter could be just the thing!
Event Campaigns
Whether they’re trying to sell out an event, or make sure everyone turns up, or both, email marketing is the answer.
So give your clients a ready-made campaign that will get it done.
Welcome Emails
Welcome emails see more than three times the transactions and revenue per email over regular promotional emails.
So help your clients strike while the iron is hot with a series of instant welcome emails.
Lead Nurturing Emails
Help your clients build on audience enquiries by creating a series of templates outlining the information they need to move from interested to purchase.
Triggered & Automatic Emails
Automated emails get 119% higher click-through rates than promotional emails. So whether your clients have an e-commerce store, offer rewards for their restaurant or want to automate birthday messages, create a bundle of templates that they can use as they wish, or purchase for a one-off fee.
Holiday Emails
Emails especially have a significant impact to sales around holiday time. For example, email provided almost 25% of website traffic on Cyber Monday 2018. There seem to be endless holidays, so why not set up some holiday email templates for your clients to take advantage of!
Build the Campaigns
Some clients will be happy to take the templates and run with them, but there will always be clients who need more. Expand the services you provide by building the campaigns or setting up automated customer journeys.
As well as building the email campaigns from your strategy, you could suggest new campaigns to reach their targets. Provide a valuable service by turning social media advertising into on-brand emails that will increase the impact.
Reporting on ROI
Make sure your clients know the success of the email campaigns through regular, ongoing campaign reporting and recommendations.
Create a performance metrics report for your clients. This can be after the email campaign has finished or monthly for continuing campaigns like welcome and nurture campaigns. Include delivery rates, open rates, click-through rates and any other stats relevant to the goals. Then make suggestions on how these stats can be improved, including A/B Testing possible options.
Vision6 has in-depth reports that show you in real-time how the campaign is going. Then you can benchmark these results against industry stats provided in the Email Marketing Metrics Report. You can also integrate your clients’ accounts with Google Analytics to track well beyond the click in the email.
“Media Merchants has been using Vision6 as our Email Marketing Platform for nearly a decade. The clear cut services they provide make our jobs easier, and their customer service is second to none. Vision6 is very much a part of our daily workflow and we’ve enjoyed using their tools over the years & watching it evolve into the robust program it is today.”
“We've recommended and helped integrate Vision6 with clients for the past 7 years, it's consistently the best-fit market tool for our clients, replacing the need for complex 'marketing clouds'. The platform provides the right balance between ease and function, and with its robust integrations and API makes it a fast to market solution for rapidly creating value.”
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I love you guys even more. It just makes my client happy and I appreciate that, as does he. ”
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