Returned per $1 spent on email, the number every agency quotes. The caveat none of them print: it comes from marketers self-reporting in a survey, not from measured revenue. Treat it as a reason to take email seriously, not as a forecast.
Source: Litmus State of Email, via Omnisend’s 2026 ROI benchmarksThe spam-complaint rate we hold clients under. Google’s published ceiling is 0.30%. Above it you lose access to delivery help, and since November 2025 bulk senders who break the rules get rejected outright, not just spam-foldered.
Source: Google Email sender guidelines FAQ, support.google.comWhat 42% of small businesses using an agency pay per month for email, while agency pricing guides quote $2,500–$10,000. Both numbers are real. They buy very different things. Ours is $400 a campaign, published.
Source: WebFX survey of 250 US marketers, 2026What’s included
Most businesses collect leads and then go quiet. This is the follow-up: mapped to how a lead becomes a customer, built once, and improved every month against the only number that matters, revenue.
Focus areas · Full-funnel marketing
Email design & development
On-brand emails that look right on a phone and get opened and clicked. Designed and coded in-house, and tested in the mail apps your customers really use.
Marketing automation
Follow-up sequences that change based on what each person does, instead of sending the whole list the same email every Tuesday.
CRM setup & integration
A CRM that captures every lead and keeps your pipeline clean, set up as the one place the truth lives. Want it worked every day, not just set up? That’s Managed CRM.
Lifecycle & loyalty
Welcome, win-back and loyalty programs for the customers you already paid to get. That’s where the easy revenue usually is.
Deliverability
The setup and habits that keep you out of the spam folder. SPF, DKIM and DMARC (the records that prove mail really came from you) on your own domain, marketing kept separate from receipts and password resets, one-click unsubscribe, and your spam-complaint rate watched against the limits Gmail and Yahoo publish. Nothing else on this page works if this doesn’t.
Segmentation & list growth
The right message to the right part of the list, and signup forms that keep the list growing.
Campaign calendar & production
Offers, seasonal sends and announcements produced on your schedule.
Revenue reporting
Which sequences bring in money, reported plainly, so the ones that earn get the attention. See a sample campaign report →
What a month on your list looks like
Ask an AI assistant how to hire an email agency and it will tell you to demand a written record of what was done each month. Here’s ours. Every line below shows up in the report you get. See a sample campaign report →
Offer agreed, designed, written, proofed, tested in the mail apps people really use, scheduled and sent, on your calendar.
Every automated sequence checked for revenue per send, not just opens. Winners get expanded, losers get rewritten or turned off. Nothing runs for a year without someone looking at it.
Hard bounces removed, people who stopped opening retired before they hurt your inbox placement, and unsubscribes honored well inside the 48-hour rule. A smaller list that lands beats a bigger one that doesn’t.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC re-verified, the sending domain checked, and your spam-complaint rate pulled from the mailbox providers themselves. The number goes in the report whether or not it flatters us.
New segments built where the data supports them, and every place people can join the list (forms, footers, popups, point of sale) checked to make sure it still works.
What went out, what it earned, what the flows did, what we changed and what’s next month. Written by the person who did the work, not exported from a dashboard.
The platforms we run
We work in these systems every week. If you’re on something else, the same approach carries over.
What “automation” actually looks like
Every agency in this category sells automated email flows. Of the ten top-ranking pages we reviewed, not one showed a single step, delay or exit rule, so buyers are asked to pay for a machine they’ve never seen a picture of. Here it is. Fictional brand, invented numbers, real structure.
- Sends at 0h, +2 days, +5 days
- 3 emails
- Exits: First purchase
- Sends at +4h, +1 day
- 2 emails
- Exits: Cart created
- Sends at +1h, +20h, +3 days
- 3 emails
- Exits: Order placed
- Sends at +1 day, +7 days, +21 days
- 3 emails
- Exits: Second order
- Sends at +90 days, +105 days
- 2 emails
- Exits: Any order
- Sends at +180 days
- 1 email
- Exits: Re-engagement, or suppression
2The branch: inside the cart-abandon flow, someone who opens email one but doesn’t buy gets a different second email than someone who never opened at all. One gets a nudge; the other gets a re-send with a new subject line. That one rule is the difference between an automation and a scheduled blast.
3The exit rule: a contact leaves every flow the moment they buy, unsubscribe or hit the sunset rule, so nobody gets a “forgot something?” email an hour after their order confirmation. This is the part that breaks most often, and the reason we review flows monthly instead of building them once.
- Trigger and exit on every step. These two facts decide whether a flow helps or annoys. If an agency can’t tell you both for every sequence they built, nobody is watching them.
- Revenue share, not send counts. The percentages show which flows carry the money. Cart abandon usually does. That’s where the review time goes; the rest gets left alone until it stops working.
- Illustrative only. Pelican Point Outfitters is a fictional business and every figure here is invented to show the shape of the thing. Yours would be built around how your customers actually buy. See the report these flows feed →
The part nobody shows you: whether the mail arrives
Deliverability is sold as a service line all over this category and shown by nobody. None of the ten pages we reviewed show an authentication status, an inbox placement rate or a spam-complaint reading. It’s the least glamorous screen in email marketing and the one everything else depends on. This is what we check, and what it looks like when we report it.
| SPF | Pass | Publishes exactly who may send as you. Failing this is the most common reason a new sender lands in spam. |
|---|---|---|
| DKIM | Pass | Signs each message so the mailbox provider can prove it wasn’t altered. 2048-bit key, rotated annually. |
| DMARC | Pass | Policy set to quarantine, alignment passing, and reports coming back to an address we watch. Google’s minimum is a policy of none. We don’t stop there. |
| Custom sending domain | Verified | Marketing sends on its own subdomain so a heavy promo week can’t damage the reputation your receipts and password resets depend on. |
| One-click unsubscribe | Pass | Required on marketing mail since 2024, with unsubscribes honored within 48 hours. Transactional mail is exempt, which is one reason we keep the two apart. |
| BIMI (logo in the inbox) | Not configured | Needs a verified mark certificate that costs real money for a modest branding gain. On the backlog, deliberately not done yet. We’d rather tell you than pad the checklist. |
- One row is deliberately not green. A status panel where everything passes is a trophy, not an audit. BIMI isn’t configured on this example, and we’d tell you the same on yours.
- The numbers come from the mailbox providers. Complaint and placement readings come from the providers’ own postmaster data, not from the sending platform’s self-report, which is always more flattering.
- The DNS records live at your registrar. Set up by us, owned by you. If we part ways, your authentication keeps working. Nothing here is hosted on our account.
Us vs. the typical email agency
We read the top-ranking agency pages selling this same service, and the warnings AI assistants now give buyers unprompted. Every line on the left comes from one or the other.
The typical email agency
- You learn the price on the third call
- A percentage of “email-attributed” revenue, calculated on a setting they control
- Open-based attribution with a two-week window, quietly inflating the number
- Nothing at all about who owns the list, the account or the domain
- Deliverability sold as an extra, and never shown
- “A 30% revenue lift in 90 days”
- The monthly report is a platform export
Southern Tide Media
- $400 a campaign, or $749/mo for the whole engine, printed on this page
- A flat fee that can’t move no matter how the attribution is set
- Click-based attribution with the window stated on the report
- Your list, your account, your sending domain, in your name, in writing
- Authentication and spam rate checked monthly, shown above
- No revenue guarantee. A committed schedule and a one-business-day reply instead
- A written report, by the person who did the work
Where it starts
$400/campaignCampaigns à la carteDesigned, written, tested, sent and reported, one flat rate. Every Full Stack plan includes two campaigns a month, already priced below buying them separately.
How pricing worksHow pricing works
Published numbers: a flat rate per campaign, a run-it-for-you tier, and an hourly rate for anything custom. No surprise invoices. For context, the agencies that publish anything price monthly email between $125 and $1,275, one well-known shop starts at $1,500/mo, and the pricing guides quote $2,500–$10,000 for full-service retention. Your email platform subscription is separate and stays on your card.
Designed, written, tested, sent and reported, one flat rate. Every Full Stack plan includes two campaigns a month, already priced below buying them separately.
Managed CRM: a $1,499 onboarding, then Operate at $749/mo or Operate+ at $1,199/mo. CRM license included, daily lead engine, data cleanup and drip content.
Integrations and workflow builds beyond the engagement, scoped in writing and approved before we start.
Bundling is cheaper than buying the pieces.
See plans & pricingHow long it takes
What to expect
Automation pays for itself fast, but only after the mapping and deliverability work is done right. Here’s the order we work in.
We chart how a lead becomes a customer, and then a repeat one. Deliverability and tracking get checked before anything sends.
Flows designed, written and connected to the CRM. The first sequences go live.
We test and refine against opens, clicks and revenue, the number that matters. Winners get expanded, losers get rewritten.
Who we help
Full-service for everyone, specialists where it counts. These aren’t a menu. They’re the industries on our client roster today.
Hospitality & Resort
Pre-arrival, in-stay and win-back emails that fill the shoulder season.
Explore →E-commerce & DTC
Abandoned carts, post-purchase follow-up and a list that becomes a sales channel.
Explore →Medical & Med Spa
Rebooking and membership emails that keep the appointment book full.
Explore →Outdoor & Recreation
Seasonal launches timed to when buyers are buying.
Home Services & B2B
Long-cycle follow-up for bigger purchases and sales that run through distributors.
Legal & Professional
Follow-up that keeps a high-value inquiry warm without pestering it.
Chambers & Nonprofits
Member newsletters and event emails that get opened.
Restricted categories
Email keeps working where the ad platforms say no.
When you win, we win
Real clients, real numbers. Ratios and rankings, sourced, with each client’s sign-off.
Don’t take our word for it
“The Southern Tide Media team has smartly positioned itself as partners, versus “vendors.” Each step along the strategic path, I feel as if they are “all in” and have our best interests at heart.”
“Southern Tide Media increased our conversion rates on our SEO campaigns by 60% in short time… Brandon takes the worry out of all the technical jargon and translates that into workable applications you can understand as a business owner.”
“In every dealing I have ever had with Brandon Evans, he has been knowledgeable, fair, and has responded quickly. I would highly recommend using him for any of your business’s marketing or advertising needs!”
Questions, answered
What do you handle, and what stays on our plate?
We handle strategy, design, copy, build, testing, the send, the authentication behind it and the report afterward. You approve the offer and the calendar, and tell us when something changes in the business. If you’d rather write your own copy, say so. The work gets smaller and so does the invoice.
What does a campaign include?
Strategy, design, copy, testing, the send itself and a plain-English report on what it did. One flat $400, no meter running. See a sample campaign report →
Do you work with our existing email platform?
Almost always, yes. If a platform change would pay for itself, we’ll say so once, with reasons. We choose tools on fit, not commission. The subscription stays in your name and on your card.
Do we own our list, our account and our sending domain?
Yes, all three, and we put it in writing. The platform account is created in your name with you as the owner. We work in it as a user you’ve given access to, never on a shared login. The sending domain is your domain, with the DNS records at your registrar. This matters more than it sounds. Some platforms allow exactly one account owner, and it defaults to whoever created the account. If that’s the agency, the list isn’t really yours.
What happens to our flows and our list if we leave?
You keep everything, because it was already yours. We remove our access, hand over the flow documentation and segment definitions, and export anything that doesn’t travel with the account. It’s month to month with 30 days’ notice after any initial term. We’d rather earn next month than lock you in.
Are we going to end up in spam? What are the rules now?
The rules got strict. Since November 2025, Gmail permanently rejects mail from bulk senders who fail them, not just spam-folders it, and Microsoft did the same in May 2025. You need SPF and DKIM both passing, a DMARC record, a valid reverse-DNS entry, TLS, one-click unsubscribe on marketing mail, unsubscribes honored within 48 hours, and spam complaints kept under 0.1%. At 0.3% the mailbox providers stop helping you. We set all of that up, watch the spam rate monthly and put it in the report. Our Managed Email Delivery add-on ($25/mo, $150 setup, included in bundles) runs a dedicated sending server for your business, so your receipts and password resets can’t be hurt by anyone else’s marketing.
Whose domain does the mail send from?
Yours, on a separate marketing subdomain, kept apart from your transactional mail so a bad promo week can’t take down your password resets. We don’t pool clients onto one shared sending identity. Reputation follows the domain, and sharing one means sharing everyone else’s mistakes.
Where does the CRM fit in?
It’s where the records live. Every flow reads from it and writes back to it, so nothing falls through. If you’d rather we run the CRM outright, that’s Managed CRM, license included.