Beware of this sneaky agency lie

Ole El John-o has another cautionary tale to store in your coffers today. 

Checky: 

Remember how a few weeks ago, I told you one of my clients hired an outside email agency?

A time and resource-eating mistake, yes.

But a business revenue-eating mistake? 

Well, not even I thought this would happen. 

And yet… it appears that this is, in fact, what happened. 

Y’see, they offered to create a welcome series for us (despite mine never dipping below $9k in revenue generated for any given 30 day period—and the true 30 day period number being between 10-12k per month, like clockwork). I reviewed their welcome series. And to say it sucks is an understatement—especially compared to the one I poured blood, sweat, tears, and hours of research into. 

(They did not do a single lick of research—in fact, most of the copy they “wrote” came directly from our website, which I did not write, and thus, it ain’t particularly persuasive—story for another day.) 

They also offered to create more flows that we don’t need: Including a post-purchase (which, again, is not very good at best), an abandoned cart, and a browse abandonment. 

I hope you can feel my frustration writing this. 

We already have all this shit set up. 

The improvements (if any) will be meager at best. And there probably won’t even be improvements. 

But they also did something sneaky when getting access to our Klaviyo account that has left a bad taste in my mouth (even after I voiced these concerns to them). 

The dirty trick? 

Well, the last thing they were gonna help us do is actually something useful: Create new pop up forms. (It’s not as useful as trying to get more traffic… Something I’m still salty with my client about, especially because I’ve warned him against every stoopid agency that cold emails him.) 

And so, they created a new pop up form for us. It wasn’t much different than our original one. But it appeared to be performing much, much better. 

At the same time, the welcome series I set up (and based my original pop up form around) has jumped off a cliff in terms of revenue—despite their form “saying” we’re converting more visitors into leads. 

Remember how I mentioned the welcome series—which has been live for two full years—never dipped below $9k in any 30 day period? Well, it finally fell off its pedestal. In fact, it dipped to only about $6k for the first time ever—and ironically, right after they set up their form. 

Back to their form… 

When I investigated this issue yesterday (of seemingly having more leads but also noticing a massive dip in the performance of our welcome series). 

And y’know what I found? 

They “targeted” the form to appear to EVERYONE, including leads and customers we already have in Klaviyo. 

No wonder it converted way better: You shouldn’t allow leads or customers to enter the forms on your site. 

When I brought this up with the agency, they deflected and said it was a mistake.

(Say you don’t give a rat’s arse about my client’s business without telling me.) 

And now, for the first time in two long years, my welcome series isn’t converting as high as it always had. 

Which brings me to the rub:

Agencies will always care about them and their results (as fake as they might be) more than serving their clients. 

It’s the agency business model after all: They’ve figured out the lead gen side of their business that they don’t have to care about any one business. 

This shit pisses me off like no other. Especially because I’ve had several conversations with interested leads who hired agencies that left a bad taste in their mouth for this exact shit. 

It’s repulsive. And I’m still annoyed at my client for going behind my back to do this when our time and effort would’ve been better served fixing the real problems, which ain’t email to put it lightly. 

Worst part?

I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re “farming” email signups to our list just to make themselves look better—while jeopardizing the single best marketing channel I’ve spent years setting up and optimizing. 

While farmed email signups will make the form conversion rate sexier, these folks will never buy. They probably can’t even afford to buy even if they wanted to. 

Now, I have no evidence they did this. But I wouldn’t put it past them, based on the few convos I’ve had with them. 

If you want an email copywriter who actually cares about you and your business and your results, hit reply. 

If not, hire an agency. 

John