We’ve taken on Hit Send, an Auckland email marketing service, and we’re putting renewed focus on email marketing at Ark Advance. There’s a nice symmetry to that: email is where we started back in 2002, and it has been part of what we do ever since. Here’s why it’s getting more of our attention now, and where email fits alongside the Google Ads and social we run.

Email marketing was the first thing Ark Advance ever did. When we started out in 2002, that was the whole business: sitting down with companies who were just getting going with email and helping them find their feet. It has been one of our services ever since. What’s changing now is how much focus we’re putting behind it.

The news itself is simple. Hit Send, an email marketing service based here in Auckland, has joined Ark Advance. Same service, same straightforward way of working, now with our team behind it.

Why email still earns its place

I’ll admit I have a soft spot for email, so take this with a grain of salt. But I think it’s quietly one of the most useful things a business can do, and it tends to get overlooked.

The Google Ads and social campaigns we run are very good at one job: finding people who don’t know you yet and bringing them to your door. Email does something different. It’s the one channel you actually own. Nobody can change the rules on you overnight, and you’re not renting the audience from anyone. It’s a direct line to the people who already know you, working away in the background to keep you front of mind and turn a one-off buyer into a regular.

I’m not going to argue email is more important than the ads. It isn’t a competition. The marketing that works best uses these together, each doing the bit it does best. People have been asking whether email marketing is dead for as long as I’ve been doing this, and it keeps not dying. Taking on Hit Send means we can offer the full picture rather than half of it.

What we’ve taken on

Hit Send built its name on making email simple for business owners. You tell them what’s going on, they handle the planning, the writing, the design, the sending and the reporting, and all you do is give it a nod before it goes out. None of that changes.

The handover has already happened, and I ran the first few campaigns myself. Partly because I wanted to learn the process from the inside before the rest of the team picked it up. It’s a good process, and the clients who came across with it are in safe hands.

Hit Send was co-founded by Phil Vialoux, who has handed the business and its clients over to us. Phil was careful about where it ended up, and I’m grateful he saw us as the right home for it.

“We built Hit Send to take the hassle out of email marketing for busy business owners, so handing it on was never a decision I’d make lightly. Ark Advance were the obvious choice. They have the experience, the team and the care factor to look after my clients properly, and in many ways they were doing this kind of work before Hit Send even existed. I couldn’t have asked for a better home for it.”

Phil Vialoux, one of the founders of Hit Send

If email’s been on your list

Maybe you’ve got a customer list sitting in a spreadsheet that you’ve never really done anything with. Maybe you’ve wondered whether email is worth the bother when you’re already running ads. If that’s you, I’d genuinely like to talk it through, no pressure either way.

We started out doing email all those years ago, and it feels good to be giving it real focus again. If you’d like to know how email could work alongside the rest of your marketing, get in touch and we’ll have a chat.