How much does email marketing cost?
If you have ever wondered how much each click or lead can cost in an average email marketing campaign, the answer will always be the same – it depends. There are many factors that contribute to the final cost. You shouldn’t however, consider email marketing as a cost but as an investment.
As with every other investment, email marketing is expected to bring you a return. According to Smartinsights, email marketing has one of the highest returns on investment among popular marketing strategies and it stands at 4300%, that means it brings you $43 for every dollar invested.
In Direct Marketing Association’s Consumer email tracker report, the average ROI for respondents was £30.01 in 2016 with 49% of B2C marketers and 28% of B2B marketers reporting an average ROI above £30.
The very same report shows that 82% of marketers are spending between 0% and 20% of their marketing budget on email.
Factors that impact email marketing’s cost
When you’re planning an email marketing campaign, you shouldn’t only consider the cost of your Email Service Provider, but also the cost of graphic design, content creation and email management. The production effort of each individual email can vary greatly depending on which industry you are in, and can also differ between individual campaigns within your company. Some of the key factors that can impact the cost of an email include:
1. The quality of your current email list and subscribers
If your email list has a lot of inactive users, you will see your open and click-through rates drop. Take great care to create a proper relationship with your current subscribers. Clean your email list from inactive users on monthly basis, it will let you better manage your campaigns and it will help you avoid having your emails labeled as spam. Email providers and spam filters see campaigns with high bounce rates as a potential spam source and can decide not to accept any more emails from senders with high bounce rates.
2. The complexity of the email concept and design
If you have an original idea for your email campaign that requires a lot of human work and innovation, you can expect higher expenses.
3. Types of emails
Triggered and automated emails with dynamic code cost less than custom emails for individual campaigns.
4. The number of countries and languages supported by your company
Running the marketing operations of a multinational company can be costly, especially if it requires professional support, content creation and management in many different languages and countries.
5. Character of your business
The character of your business, the competitiveness of your industry, the type of product and your customer’s habits can impact the resources you will have to use in executing your marketing campaigns. According to a Direct Marketing Association’s study, the majority of B2C marketers are expecting an increase in costs, while the majority of B2B marketers expect costs to stay the same.
Why is email marketing cost-effective?
Email marketing has the biggest reach
Facebook updates a user’s feed in a way that it will probably display your post to only about 2% of your followers.
47% of marketers says they believe emails with exclusive content to be the most effective.
When it comes to email, it’s worth noting that people expect to receive marketing communications in their email inboxes. According to Direct Marketing Association’s Marketer email tracker 2017 study, customers say they want to receive the following through emails; discounts, free gifts, free delivery and loyalty rewards, but: 47% of marketers says they believe emails with exclusive content to be the most effective.
You don’t need any costly resources to start
Sending an individual email costs you only a couple cents, at least 10 times less than direct mail.
Automated design
Creating a new design for every email has its associated costs, but it also means that if you use templates with dynamic code you can greatly reduce the costs of email marketing. Email production automation is one of our top 10 email marketing tends for 2018.
Read our Trendbook 2018 Email Marketing to learn more
Saving time is saving money
If time is money, you save twice with email marketing, as it’s also time effective. You can automate the production of all of the following: email design, content and management. You can use trigger-based marketing to automatically send your customers messages when they abandon orders or haven’t logged in for a while. This technology saves a lot of your time and tends to generate 4x more revenue and 18x greater profits, according to Forrester Research.
