I spent years as the CMO of an 8-figure DTC brand hiring and firing agencies.

Now here I am 4 years later, and I’m one of those agencies.

Here's the thing nobody tells you: most operators can't spot the difference between a good agency and a mediocre one until they're six months in and $30K deep.

By then you've lost time, money, and momentum.

I've been on both sides of that table.

Here are the 3 non-obvious red flags within the first 2 weeks of signing that I wish I'd known to look for myself.

You ask: "Why is email revenue down this month?"

Bad agency: "We're not sending enough. Let's add 5 more campaigns."

Good agency: "Recipients are down 60%. Our deliverability score and sender reputation are both solid, so this isn't a quality problem. It's volume. We're going to add 5 sends, track the delta, and adjust from there."

One is an in-the-moment reaction. The other is analysis.

The difference costs you real money because you end up solving the wrong problem. I've seen brands spend three months optimizing copy and creative when the actual issue was list growth fell off a cliff and nobody bothered to check.

Surface-level answers feel helpful in the moment. They're not. If your agency is giving you immediate solutions without digging into the data first, you're paying someone to guess.

Most brand operators don't care about this one. We see clients ignore monthly reports all the time. Hopefully that means they trust us.

But here's what most people miss: reporting isn't for you. It's for them.

If your agency isn't sending you reports, there's a very good chance they're not creating them or looking at them either. And that means they're flying blind on your account.

They can't forecast. They can't spot leaks. They can't pivot when something starts breaking.

You might be thinking "our numbers are good, who cares about a deck?" That's dangerous.

The agency that isn't tracking metrics week over week won't catch the problem until it's a full-blown crisis.

Minimum standard: monthly reporting with clear attribution methodology and accessible data.

If they can't show you what's working and what's not in a format that makes sense, they don't know either.

If your Slack message sits unanswered for 24+ hours, RUN.

Support and communication have no upfront ROI. It costs agencies money to staff properly and respond fast. That's exactly why it matters.

Agencies that deprioritize response times are either completely underwater and don't know how to allocate resources, or they just don't care. All are bad.

I've seen both scenarios play out. The slammed agency will burn out and churn you in six months.

The one that doesn't care already has.

Good looks like this: same-day replies, even if it's just "looking into this, back to you by EOD tomorrow."

That's it. You're not asking for miracles. You're asking for acknowledgment that your question exists.

This is the thing that separates agencies that actually care from churn-and-burn shops running 47 accounts on a team of three.

Here are some of the non-obvious things I found ALL of the agencies we had long and incredible (and profitable) relationships with had in common, before they had the time to generate killer results for us.

1️⃣ Onboarding is dialed. Clear process, clear point of contact, clear next steps. If onboarding is chaotic and you're never sure who to talk to or what needs to happen next, good luck. That chaos doesn't go away. Every great agency relationship I've had started with tight onboarding.

2️⃣ Calls are set and structured. If they're rescheduling every other week or filling 30 minutes with fluff that doesn't REALLY matter, it's a sign. Good calls follow a structured format (Like the "what's working, what's not, what's next" style). That's it. You should never leave a call thinking "why was I even on that."

3️⃣ They bring you problems AND solutions. This one sounds weird but it's real. Example: "Our IP reputation dropped. Likely from the segmentation test we ran last week. Here's what we're doing to fix it and here's the timeline." You don't need people bringing you problems constantly, but when they identify issues early and tell you what they're doing about it, that's a win. I found that an agency that only brings good news, is likely hiding something.

You don't need a perfect agency. You need one that's honest, responsive, and actually looking at the data.

If you're evaluating agencies right now or wondering whether yours is one of the good ones, let's talk. Book 15 minutes here: choose.transparentdigital.agency

Until next time,
— Anthony