How I Use Email Marketing in My Agency

Email marketing has provided an effective, one-to-many strategy for my agency — here’s a look at why and how I do it.

Kyle Van Deusen

Published:

Filed Under:

Client Management, Product, Sales, Strategy

Kyle Van Deusen

Kyle Van Deusen

The Admin Bar

After spending 15 years as a graphic designer and earning a business degree, I launched my agency, OGAL Web Design, in 2017. A year later, after finding the amazing community around WordPress, I co-found The Admin Bar, which has grown to become the #1 community for WordPress professionals. I'm a husband and proud father of three, and a new resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

email marketing 01
This content contains affiliate links. View our affiliate disclaimer.

In a recent Zoom call, we were talking about client retention and someone asked if anyone was using email marketing for their agency, how they find time to get it done, and what kind of results they get from it.

They were interested in exploring this avenue, which they haven’t dove into yet, concerned about adding more to their workload — especially if it was a waste of time or didn’t provide a good return on investment.

I understand those concerns — I wasn’t always a believer in email marketing either. 

But when I subscribed to Nurture Copy back in December of 2020, all of that changed.

A few of us in the Zoom call went on to sing the praises of Nurture Copy, and talk about how it’s worked in our business.

While the other participants were familiar with Nurture Copy, when I shared my screen to show them a little “behind the scenes look”, they were blown away with everything that’s included.

The folks behind Nurture Copy, dynamic duo Mel and Matt, are regulars in The Admin Bar — and post some of the most “liked” and thoughtful replies to people’s questions (especially when it comes to dealing with sticky situations).

But being the good community citizens that they are, they don’t often brag about their products (they also run Funnel Packs, which are plug-and-play funnels for your agency). 

While I appreciate them not spamming the group, it’s unfortunate Nurture Copy doesn’t get our due inside our community — so allow me to sing their praises just a little bit.

In this article I’m going to explain why I value my email list, how Nurture Copy has helped me execute a solid email marketing strategy, and give you a bit of a “behind the scenes” look at what all is included (keep in mind, this is gated content that requires a subscription, so I can only share so much).

Two Major Reasons Why My List is Valuable to My Agency

Email marketing comes with plenty of benefits, and you won’t struggle to find a bazillion articles online talking about all of them.

But when it comes to my web agency, there are two main reasons why I think having an email list, and emailing them regularly is invaluable.

#1. Staying top of mind with my customers

We all know it’s more cost efficient to keep our existing customers than it is to go out and find new ones — and recurring revenue is vital to our business (not to mention our sanity).

For those reasons alone, my care plan (or any other ongoing service) customers are like gold — and it’s vital to keep them happy.

There are a few challenges in doing that…

First, you need to stay top of mind. 

Care plan services are often out of sight, out of mind for our customers. Even if you send monthly reports, most agencies admit their clients never read them.

Having an email list you reach out to more frequently gives you more opportunity to stay top of mind. Even if they don’t read every email, you’re still showing up in their inbox regularly.

As a customer of yours, they are unlikely to unsubscribe to your emails in fear of missing out on important information as it pertains to their website — so whether they read it or not, you can continue to pop in their brain every time you send an email.

As important as it is to stay top of mind, sharing relevant and valuable information takes things to the next level. 

In my weekly newsletter, I’m sharing tips, strategies, and ways my clients can improve their online presence and grow their business.

Sure, there’s a soft “pitch” every now and then, but the majority of emails are strictly delivering value and proving my expertise.

These emails provide additional client touchpoints that you can execute in a one-to-many strategy. 

It’s important to have one-on-one time with your customer, but you’re unlikely to be able to do that weekly with all of your customers.

Newsletters fill the gap between the one-on-one communication and allow you to reach your entire audience (no matter the size) all in one go.

#2. Testing ideas and making sales

I try to not not pitch too often in my newsletter, but I think it would be a waste to never try to make a sale.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to not only sell products, but to test ideas and find out what your audience (especially your existing list of paying customers) are interested in.

But emailing them infrequently makes your pitches much more obvious.

If your clients haven’t heard from you in weeks (or even months!) and you email them unexpectedly with a new offer, a chance to upgrade, or even a notice of a rate increase — you’re not creating an environment where clients look forward to your emails.

Your chances of converting on emails where you haven’t spent the time to develop trust and build a relationship are low.

But when you’re communicating with them regularly, these kinds of emails don’t hit your clients out of the blue.

At this point, they are expecting to hear from you, and are much more likely to purchase or provide honest feedback because you’ve primed them for conversion by providing value and demonstrating your expertise consistently.

How Nurture Copy Makes My Email Marketing Easy to Manage

Hopefully you can see some of the big benefits of emailing your list frequently. 

But who has the time for all that? 

Back when I was writing my weekly emails myself, I’m not going to lie — it was a struggle. I’d often send out low-value emails just to meet the deadline, or skip a week or two when I was too busy to get it done at all.

But consistency is the key to making email marketing work in your agency. I gave up on several occasions realizing that being inconsistent was just as bad as not doing it at all.

Besides not having enough time in the day, I also struggled with coming up with topics to talk about, having imposter syndrome about my ability to write emails, and not being able to effectively tie my emails into my other marketing (like social media, blog posts, funnels, etc.).

Thankfully, these challenges are exactly what Nurture Copy not only identified but solved with their monthly subscription.

Each month I’m delivered copy and paste ready emails (along with subject lines!) to send to my list (they require minimal tweaking, but could be fully customized if you wish), ideas for companion blog posts, and a whole host of other bonuses including “bonus tip” videos, quarterly mini-courses, and a vault full of additional goodies.

Topics are wide ranging, from website optimizations to mindset and productivity — and they are exactly the kind of messages I’d like to share with my customers to demonstrate my expertise while providing value consistently.

On the first Monday of every month I get all my materials delivered, and can schedule a month (or more!) worth of emails out in no time.

In fact, this morning I scheduled this week’s email, and weekly emails through the end of October (6 weeks away) in the 30 minutes of free time I had before taking the kids to the bus stop.

I want to both hug and cuss Matt and Mel for leaving me with no excuses not to get it done. 

Nurture Copy Behind-the-Scenes Look

It’s hard to promote a service where the content is the deliverable and by showing you exactly what you get, they’d be giving it away. 

Thankfully you can download a sample pack that includes 2 sample emails, 2 blog post ideas, and a video walkthrough. I’d highly recommend signing up for the sample pack and judging the quality for yourself. 

If you’re even mildly impressed with the samples they offer, then you’ll be blown away by what you actually get as a subscriber. 

Nurture Copy offers 3 different plans, each to meet a different budget.

The Acorn Plan is the most affordable, coming in at $29 monthly or $290 for an annual subscription, and comes with 4 emails, accompanying subject lines, companion blog post ideas for each email, video walkthroughs each month, bonus tips and access to their private Facebook group.

With the Oak Plan, which runs $49/mo or $490/yr, you get the same set of goodies, but your emails and blog posts go up to 6 per month and you get a monthly tutorial (which comes in video form).

Finally, the Forest Plan (which is what I subscribe to) packs the most punch and delivers the most value. Along with everything that’s included in the other plans, you get 8 done-for-you emails, 8 blog post ideas, plus a quarterly min-course and access to their “vault”, which is packed full of handy templates, lessons, and other goodies saved for their top-tier subscribers.

Behind The Scenes

The Dashboard

When you subscribe to Nurture Copy, you get access to a customer dashboard where you can access all of your deliverables.

nurture copy dashboard

Everything is well organized, and easy to find — which is great since keeping up with the massive amount of content they provide could be a daunting task without it.

Each month you get access to that month’s content, which in my case includes 8 copy & paste ready emails, 8 blog post ideas, bonus tips, a monthly tutorial, and new items uploaded to the vault.

Monthly Deliverables

When you click into each month’s deliverables, you get an organized list, video embeds, and links to everything that’s included in your plan for the month.

nuture copy deliverables january 2021

Your email content and blog post ideas come with a walkthrough video where Matt explains the concepts of all the emails.  You might be tempted to skip these and get straight to the content, but I’ve found he always drops in some words of wisdom in these videos — so they are worth taking the extra few minutes to watch each month. 

Email and Blog Content

The email and blog content itself is delivered in Google Docs format, with a table of contents so you can easily jump between each of your pieces of content:

nurture copy content example

Each email comes with a brief that will explain the purpose of the email so you know exactly what you’re sending, the subject line ideas, and the content of the email — ready to copy and paste.

There are some occasions where you need to fill in specific information to the email (like a link to your website or booking form), but those items are always clearly marked to avoid you sending them erroneously. 

Some emails come with optional “pitches” you can include (also clearly marked), and I will pick and choose when to use them based on if I have a strong offer that goes along with the email’s topic.

As for the blog posts ideas, you get one for every email so they compliment each other (and why I refer to them as “companion pieces”). 

Because of duplicate content issues, they can’t provide you with a copy/paste ready blog post, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t giving you plenty to go off of.

The blog post ideas are much like a brief you would send off to a copywriter — if you’re fantastic at sending really effective project briefs!

They come with a title suggestion, an overview of the purpose of the article, and typically and outline you can follow to structure your post in a logical way that ensures you cover everything you need to.

While I, personally, don’t tend to use all the blog post topics, I’ve sent the brief over to my copywriter on many occasions, and they had everything they needed to write the post for me.

Short of writing the blog post for you, you have everything you need!

Quarterly Mini-Course

The mini-courses, delivered quarterly to those on the Forest Plan, come as a series of short videos and cover topics that are things I’m sure you’d like to learn more about.

They’ve covered buying cycles, using storytelling, and finding your voice — all of which have been extremely valuable to me as an agency owner (and something they should probably package up and sell as a standalone course — they would all be worth the price of admission!

nurture copy mini course 1

The Vault

I’m going to have to send this post over to Matt and Mel to get their permission to share all these behind-the-scenes looks — and I’m most nervous about sharing the vault.

It’s aptly named, because these exclusive bonuses are treasures that need to be kept under lock and key!

Here’s a quick look at just some of the items inside the vault, which come in the form of video, templates, and downloads:

nurture copy vault exclusives

Wrapping Up

I’m completely sold on email being a big part of my agency’s ongoing marketing efforts. 

Between the fact that I can have one-to-many conversions, get directly in front of my customers, nurture relationships, provide value, demonstrate expertise, and even make sales — there’s no reason not to like email. 

No other platform gives you this range of opportunities in such an intimate setting (like the inbox).

But I’ve proven to myself time and time again that I can’t do it alone.

There’s not enough time in the day, and I’ve struggled with coming up with enough content ideas to keep my calendar full.

But Nurture Copy solves those problems and then some. 

Is it worth the price? Honestly, and don’t tell Matt and Mel, but it’s easily worth double — just ask anyone who’s using it.

Hardly a week goes by when I don’t have a client reply to my newsletter thanking me for sharing it with them, or scheduling a call (one of my most used CTA’s in my email marketing) to explore some of my services.

It’s paid for itself many times over — that’s for sure. Honestly, it’s not hard to do… One decent sale and you’ll pay for a year’s worth of the Forest Plan with money left over.

If I sound like a fanboy, well, it’s because I am — Nurture Copy has given me every reason to be their biggest cheerleader.

I honestly believe you’re missing out on an opportunity here for not only effective marketing, but a nearly done-for-you service that will require little of your most valuable asset — your time. 

If nothing else, sign up for their email sample pack and see for yourself. 

Share This Article!
Kyle Van Deusen

Kyle Van Deusen

The Admin Bar

After spending 15 years as a graphic designer and earning a business degree, I launched my agency, OGAL Web Design, in 2017. A year later, after finding the amazing community around WordPress, I co-found The Admin Bar, which has grown to become the #1 community for WordPress professionals. I'm a husband and proud father of three, and a new resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Come Join Us!

Join the #1 WordPress Community and dive into conversations covering every aspect of running an agency!

Kyle Van Deusen

Community Manager

The Friday Chaser

Wash down the week with the best of The Admin Bar! News, tips, and the best conversations delivered straight to your inbox every Friday!

Latest Events

February 20th, 2024

Making Sense of Security

Going beyond the marketing hype to make informed decisions on security!

January 26th, 2024

Effective Spam Defense for WordPress Forms

Conquer form spam in WordPress with Mark Westguard on Jan 26th. Learn key spam-fighting tactics in our live, interactive session. Register now to transform your forms!

More Articles

Privacy By Design

Are your websites designed with privacy in mind? Privacy By Design

Incorporating Privacy by Design in web development not only aligns with legal requirements and avoids hefty fines but also serves as a competitive advantage by enhancing client trust and consumer privacy awareness.

Process

No More Headaches: Streamline Your Business Processes in 7 Simple Steps

Are your internal business processes a source of too many headaches in an already busy schedule? Learn how to streamline your processes right here.

Cookie

Google Tightens Privacy Rules: Preparing Your Website for Consent Mode V2

What web agencies need to know about Google’s Consent Mode V2