How to brief an email marketing agency.
A good email agency brief states your goal, your customers, your offer and margins, your constraints and the access the agency needs. Keep it to two pages, put numbers you trust in it, and say plainly what you have tried before and what did not work.
Goals and measures.
Say what you want email to do in the next six months, such as lift repeat orders, reduce reliance on paid traffic or rebuild after a deliverability problem. Pick one or two goals, not eight.
Name the numbers you will use to judge progress, and where those numbers live.
Customers and products.
Describe who buys, what they buy first and what they buy next. Include the typical time between orders, your best sellers and the products you want to push or avoid.
Share your margins by category. They decide how much discounting you can afford.
Constraints and history.
List brand rules, legal wording, shipping limits and anything the agency must not do. Tell them what you tried before, including what worked, what did not and what you suspect.
Share previous audit notes or agency handover documents if you have them.
Access and people.
List who needs access to Klaviyo, your store, analytics and DNS, and who approves emails. Name one decision maker, because feedback from five people at once slows everything.
Share the brief early.
Send the brief before the first call, not after. It lets the agency arrive with real questions, and it shows you quickly whether they have read it. Update it after the audit, because the first version always contains assumptions that the data will correct.
In practice.
A store owner writes a two page brief: one goal, which is to lift repeat orders; their reorder window; margins by category; the offers they will and will not run; and past tests that failed. The agency's audit comes back focused on the replenishment and winback gaps in days, because the brief removed a round of questions.
Checklist.
- One or two goals with the measures that prove them
- Customer description and typical reorder time
- Margins by category and the offer limits
- Brand and legal constraints written down
- Named approver and a turnaround time for feedback
Common mistakes.
- Briefing with a wish list of ten goals
- Hiding past failures from the agency
- Having no single person who can say yes
Questions people ask.
How long should a brief be?
Two pages is enough. A short brief that is specific beats a long one full of general statements.
What if I do not know my numbers?
Say so, and give the agency access to Klaviyo and your store analytics. Part of the audit can be establishing a baseline.
Should I share past failures?
Yes. Knowing what did not work saves the agency from repeating it and gives them useful clues about your customers.
Inferno Emails is an agency, so we have an interest in you hiring one. This guide is written to help you choose well, including choosing someone else or doing the work yourself.
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