How to get email marketing clients: a guide for retention agencies

To get email marketing clients, choose brands that can pay a retainer and send from a platform you work in, sign up to each as a new customer, and open with a dated finding the owner can check on their phone, such as a welcome email that never arrived. Find them through client and partner referrals, the Klaviyo and Shopify partner directories, technology partners, content and events, and cold email built on store data, then run the audit after the first call and price the proposal from it.

Retention, email and SMS agencies win new clients by choosing brands that can pay a retainer, checking what each brand sends a new subscriber, and opening with a finding the owner can check on their own phone. The same method works on Klaviyo, Postscript, Attentive and Omnisend, for a freelancer and for a team of 50.

Most agencies rely on referrals and have nobody whose job is to find the next client. In SparkToro’s 2025 survey of digital agencies, referrals from existing and past clients were “by far the biggest driver of new business”, 79% of agencies had no one dedicated to their own marketing, and 70% had no full time sales staff.

Which brands need an agency

The brands most likely to hire you can pay a monthly retainer, send from a platform you work in, pay for their traffic, and show a gap a new subscriber can see. On size, Darkroom’s 2026 guide puts agency starter retainers at $3,000 to $5,000 a month for brands with $1M to $5M in annual revenue, and Netalico says most of its clients do $2M to $50M in GMV.

A test of 362 ecommerce brands that Joy Joya published in July 2026, using new email addresses and phone numbers, found that 158 sent no welcome email, 53 never sent the text they promised and 20 sent an offer that didn’t match the pop up.

A brand that can pay, runs a platform you know and shows a gap is the strongest prospect, because you have something specific to show it.

Check a brand from outside

Use only the sign up paths any customer has, buy nothing, and count a gap once the sign up is confirmed, the spam folder is checked and 48 hours have passed. The full method is in how to audit a prospect’s email and SMS without a Klaviyo login.

By hand, each prospect needs its own addresses, a phone number and 48 hours of watching, which suits about 5 prospects at a time. Obsession’s retention agency use case runs the same check on any store you name.

Where to find email marketing clients

Agencies find most clients through people who already know them. In SparkToro’s survey, 15% named partner companies as their top source of referrals, and of the 59% that had tried outbound sales, 9% called it very effective and 33% not effective at all.

We make Obsession, which does some of this, so every line about another tool is taken from that tool’s own pages, checked on 23 October 2026.

An agency that wins enough work through referrals and partner agencies needs none of the paid tools in the table.

Referrals from clients and partner agencies

Ask a client for an introduction once a fix shows in their numbers, and name the kind of brand you want to meet. Agree referrals in both directions with CRO, Shopify build and paid media agencies that serve the same brands without running their email.

Technology partners

SMS, review and other apps run their own partner programmes, with directories that reach brands already using the app. Postscript features Gold and Platinum partners in its directory, with Gold at $15,000 of referred MRR over a rolling 12 months, and pays commission monthly for a referred customer’s first 12 months. Okendo pays a 20% revenue share on referred deals and puts Gold and Platinum partners first for lead sharing.

The Klaviyo agency partner program and directory

Klaviyo’s partner page lists 6,000+ agency partners, and its tiers run Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Elite. On the Master track, for agencies that manage clients’ accounts, the requirements include:

• Silver: $250 of referred and $250 of managed MRR, and 1 employee through the required curriculum.
• Gold: $5,000 of each, $500 of platform MRR other than email, and 3 employees.
• Platinum: $20,000 of each, $4,000 of platform MRR, and 10 employees.
• Elite: $40,000 of each, more than 1 case study a year, and 20 people through the curriculum.

Silver partners and above can list in the Agency Partner Directory once Klaviyo approves their profile. Brands there filter partners by service type, budget and location and contact them from the profile. In the starting tier, renamed Bronze on 1 July 2025, Klaviyo pays a 10% revenue share on a referred account’s email and text MRR for 12 months, for leads that become customers within 90 days with no earlier sales relationship with Klaviyo.

The Shopify Partner Directory

The Shopify Partner Program is free to join, and partners earn a monthly revenue share for each client they refer. On 23 October 2026, the directory listed 2,254 partners for email marketing, which merchants filter by price, location, tier, industry and language. Listing is by invitation, mainly for Plus, Premier and Platinum partners. The thresholds include $500k a year of revenue to Shopify from merchants a partner brought in over 5 years, plus at least 2 Plus or Enterprise shops or 40 Standard shops.

Content and events

Speaking at events rose to 4th among sources of new business in SparkToro’s survey. In the client study inside Agency Core 2026, 61% of 400 clients said conference speaking shows true agency expertise, against 23% of agencies who saw it as a trust signal. Write articles that answer what store owners search when a flow breaks, such as why a welcome or basket email isn’t sending.

Store data, contact data and cold email

Store Leads and BuiltWith build the list by platform, apps and estimated size, and Apollo and Clay find the people and their email addresses. None of these tools shows what a brand sends its subscribers, so the reason to write comes from your own check, and the consent rules below apply to every send.

The first message

A free audit run inside the account needs the brand’s login first. Flowium’s audit page asks for Manager access to a Klaviyo account for a full audit, so the prospect sees the value only after agreeing to work with you. Open instead with 1 thing about the prospect’s own emails that the owner can check on their phone.

• Write to the founder or head of ecommerce from your own address, and say who you are.
• State the finding with its date and time: when you signed up, what arrived and when, or that nothing came in 48 hours.
• Attach the evidence: the email as it arrived, or the empty inbox with the time showing.
• Ask for 15 minutes to show what you would fix first, and check again the day before the call.

Two example first lines are in the outside audit guide.

Consent rules for cold email

The rules depend on the country and on whether you write to a company or a person. This summary is not legal advice.

• United States. The FTC’s CAN-SPAM guide says the law makes no exception for business to business email, and it sets no consent requirement before a first email. Each email needs accurate sender details and subject line, your postal address and a clear way to opt out, honoured within 10 business days, and penalties run up to $53,088 for each email that breaks the law.
• United Kingdom. The ICO says you can email a company, limited liability partnership, Scottish partnership or government body without consent, if you don’t hide who you are and you give an address to opt out. Sole traders and some partnerships need consent first, and named employees’ addresses raise data protection questions. The ICO is reviewing its guidance after the Data (Use and Access) Act.
• European Union. The ePrivacy Directive requires prior consent for email marketing to individuals and leaves businesses to each member state. Germany’s Act against Unfair Competition treats email advertising without prior express consent as an unacceptable nuisance, for businesses and consumers alike. Under the GDPR, the European Commission says people must be told by the first message that you hold their data to send them adverts, and they have the right to object. A bought list needs proof from its seller that the data was collected in line with the GDPR.

Keep a list of everyone who opts out and suppress them in every tool you send from.

Call, audit and proposal

1. The first call. Show the finding, then ask about the past: who runs email and SMS, on which platform, what share of revenue email earned last quarter, what they tried, and who else decides. Close by asking for access.
2. Access. Ask for the narrowest role that covers the audit. Klaviyo’s Analyst role can view analytics, segments and reporting and preview flow messages without editing them, and Flowium says Analyst access works but may limit its report.
3. The audit. Run the 3 layers in the email marketing audit: the account, deliverability, and what a new subscriber receives beside 2 or 3 rivals.
4. The proposal. Lead with the priority 1 findings and the monthly revenue each puts at risk, from the brand’s own flow report, then the scope, price, term and the date the first fix goes live.
5. After the signature. Repeat the outside check after each fix, so the monthly report shows each finding as found, fixed and checked again, in the format of proof that every flow fired.

How agencies price the work

Agencies that publish their prices use 4 models, often combined.

• A monthly retainer. Netalico lists $1,200 a month for 4 emails, $2,500 for 8 emails and 2 texts, and $5,000 for 16 emails and 4 texts. Darkroom’s guide sets agency tiers by brand revenue: $3,000 to $5,000 a month at $1M to $5M, $5,000 to $8,000 at $5M to $15M, and $8,000 to $10,000+ above $15M.
• A fee per flow or project. Netalico lists flow packages at $2,500, $5,500 and $6,000, and Excelohunt sells an abandoned cart flow at $349 and a welcome series at $419.
• A paid audit. Netalico lists a Klaviyo audit at $1,000, with a report, recommendations and a walkthrough.
• A revenue share. YOCTO’s 2026 guide describes 10% to 20% of attributed or incremental revenue, and Excelohunt a lower base fee plus a share. Klaviyo’s default attribution is last touch with 5 day windows for email opens and clicks, so agree the window and how email revenue is counted before you sign, as YOCTO’s guide and shopexperts’ cost guide advise.

Darkroom’s guide favours month to month or 90 day terms over 12 month contracts. A scope that also names what the client can check each month, such as every flow live and arriving, gives the client a measure beyond the number of emails sent.

The pipeline in your numbers

Work back from the retainers you want, using your own rates where your CRM has them.

1. Proposals = new retainers ÷ your close rate. Proposify reports a 34% average across 742,137 proposals sent through its software in 2025 (vendor data).
2. First calls = proposals ÷ the share of first calls that lead to a proposal.
3. Conversations = first calls ÷ the share of conversations that book a call. A conversation is a referral, a directory enquiry or a reply.

An agency that wants 3 retainers this quarter, closes 34% of proposals, proposes after 1 in 2 first calls and books a call from 1 in 3 conversations needs 9 proposals, 18 first calls and 54 conversations. At the 3.43% average reply rate in Instantly’s 2025 platform data (vendor data), 54 conversations from cold email alone would take at least 1,575 first emails, so each referral in the mix replaces about 29 of them.

At the $36,460 a client in the example above, 3 new clients bring in $109,380 in their first 12 months.

Limits and next steps

• An outside check covers 1 inbox at 1 moment. The cause of a gap sits inside the account, which you see after the brand agrees to an audit.
• Store data is estimated. Confirm size and platform on the first call.
• Partner rules change. Klaviyo renamed its starting tier in July 2025, and Shopify updates tiers every quarter.
• The pipeline rates are averages across software users (vendor data). After 1 quarter, use your own.

Black Friday is Friday 27 November 2026, and many stores freeze code around 20 November. Sign up to your 10 best prospects this week, so each brand’s season is in your sheet before January, when brands review their agencies and platforms.

Common questions