The trend of hiring an offshore team is getting more and more popular with each passing day. It’s a convenient way of getting access to a huge talent pool. Moreover, it is cost-effective and more flexible than an in-house team.
According to a study by Deloitte, maximum people are hiring to offshore agencies or outsourcing because of its affordability.
Advantages of Hiring Offshore Email Team
1. You can scale up or down, as needed
Outsourcing gives you the liberty to hire a single resource or an entire email marketing team. Based on your workload, you can either upscale or downscale the resource requirement.
2. It spares you of the cumbersome hiring process
There are several steps involved in hiring an in-house professional — shortlisting the candidates, scheduling the interviews, negotiating, preparing the offer letter, induction process, and training the employees. With outsourcing, you can skip all these steps.
The agency takes full responsibility for allocating the right talent according to your expectations. There is no training and retention cost as the agency provides you a pre-vetted talent pool. For example: Email Uplers allows you to hire an offshore team in just five days.
3. Outsourcing is cost-effective
As you pay the talent according to the pay scale in the country where the agency is located, it warrants lower costs in relation to in-house talent. [Take a look at the cost comparison in this article.]
4. You get access to seasoned professionals
Besides getting a huge range of skilled talent, outsourcing also allows you to work with expert professionals who are well-versed with the latest tools and technology.
For example: Email Uplers gives you access to Marketo, Salesforce, and Klaviyo-certified experts. They are official partners with Mailchimp and Braze so you can be assured that the professionals are qualified and pretty adept at their job.
5. It ensures a more inclusive approach
Businesses can hire talent from anywhere in the world, thereby cutting off the geographic barriers. It also helps expand business horizons across the globe.
Email Talents Available for Hire in an Agency
1. Email Designers
Email designers are responsible for:
- Designing emails considering the email coding practices
- Using graphics, typography, colors, and layout according to the purpose of the email
- Creating designs that would bring greater engagement and click-through rate
- Abiding by the anti-spam guidelines while designing
- Staying abreast with the latest design trends and technological advancements
2. Email Developers
Email developers handle:
- Creation of HTML emails with flawless rendering across all email clients and devices
- Troubleshooting coding issues promptly
- Coding dynamic email templates
- Integrating the templates in the client’s CRM or ESP
- Resolving complex rendering issues
3. Email Campaign Managers
Email campaign managers are responsible for:
- Preparing the email strategy and calendar
- Deploying the email templates according to the timeline
- Defining goals, setting KPIs, and ensuring they are achieved
- Imparting a consistent customer experience across different channels
- Building advanced segmentation strategies
- Analyzing the email performance and preparing reports
- Iterating the email campaigns based on the analytics
4. Email Automation Experts
Email automation experts are responsible for:
- Setting up and execution of email automation programs
- Importing and segmenting lists
- Carrying out data hygiene and validation
- Monitoring the email deliverability
- Creating multi-channel automation programs and managing them
- Analyzing the performance of workflows and their optimization
Comparing the cost of in-house and offshore talent:
Problems with Hiring Offshore Team and How to Overcome Them
1. Language barriers and cultural differences
Not everyone will be proficient in English or the language of your communication. Also, there will be cultural differences if you hire someone from the offshore team.
For instance: If you are in India and the offshore team is based in California, you must keep in mind that they will celebrate 4th of July as Independence Day and have several Holidays in Q4 because of Christmas.
Solution:
Sensitize your staff to understand such cultural beliefs. Set the right expectations while hiring the offshore resources and have some guidelines for communication. Share all the necessary documents, spreadsheets, and slides that will help overcome these barriers.
2. Lack of control over the remote team
Offshore hiring can be a problem as you might not be able to check the progress on a task as and when you want to.
Solution:
Select agencies that provide you resources who work as an extended team and report directly to you. Make use of collaboration tools like Slack and project management tools like Trello or Proofhub to track the task list. Clarify about the daily reporting, leaves, and holidays in the beginning itself.
3. Threat to data security
Outsourcing or hiring an offshore team comes with data security issues as you have to share confidential data and trade secrets with them. It is one of the top reasons why business owners shy away from hiring remote teams.
Solution:
Seek legal advice and get an NDA prepared before hiring the offshore team. A detailed outsourcing contract works wonders and helps protect your sensitive data and intellectual property.
It should include clauses that the professional will not share the data or intellectual property with anyone and the company can take action if he or she fails to adhere to the conditions.
How to Pick the Right Agency for Your Email Needs?
Once you have decided to take the outsourcing route, you must ask yourself certain questions so that you can choose the right agency.
- What kind of roles and responsibilities are you looking for?
- Do you need any ESP-certified experts for email campaign management?
- What are your budget preferences?
- Would you prefer the dedicated resource model or pay-as-you-go model?
- Has the agency you have shortlisted worked in a similar industry before?
After you have answers to all these questions, go through the website, case studies, and testimonials to understand how the agency works.
All these steps are the prerequisites before hiring an agency. Skipping this step might mess up with your business growth. So, think twice and then make an informed decision.
Wrapping Up
Hiring an offshore team is like the middle-of-the-road solution. It gives you the best of all worlds as it eliminates the risk associated with freelancing and the high costs of hiring in-house professionals.
So, if you need help with your email execution, just outsource to an agency and rest assured that your email campaigns are in safe hands.
Source: Hiring an Offshore Email Marketing Team
About the Author!
Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free responsive HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.