The likely reason you’re reading a guide about email marketing costs is that you’re wondering if the benefits outweigh the costs. While every campaign is different, and all businesses have unique dynamics, there’s no doubt that email marketing consistently offers some of the safest returns on investment in the marketing world.
Just how favorable are the statistics? On average, brands earn $36 for every dollar invested. Within the retail, ecommerce, and consumer goods sectors, the ROI for every dollar spent jumps to $45.
Few marketing endeavors offer these kinds of returns. And when you consider the fact that email marketing is user-friendly and scalable, it’s no wonder that everyone from scrappy startups to Fortune 500 juggernauts use it as an essential part of their marketing toolkit.
Just as social media marketing is a method of promoting your brand via social media, email marketing is spreading the word about your brand using emails. There are many different methods of communication used around the world, but email retains its place at the top because it’s low-cost, effective, and available worldwide.
In 2020, there were four billion email users worldwide
By next year, that number will have increased 6,000% to 4.6 billion
In 2022, about 333 billion emails were sent daily
By 2026, it’s projected that the number will be 392.5 billion
As you can see, email is the preferred communication channel for billions of people worldwide. It’s a natural extension of our increasingly digital lives—newspaper ads and outdoor advertising are in a perpetual state of decline, while email is an ideal complement for us while we go online to shop, search, date, connect, or pay our mortgage.
It is email’s adjacency to so much of our lives that leads to exceptional engagement, with email marketing scoring higher click-through rates than even social media.
Savvy marketers use email marketing to:
Boost brand awareness
Generate more leads
Build connections with welcome messages
Retain their current customers
Increase their website traffic
Strengthen their social media following
Announce new offerings
Promote special opportunities
Conduct insightful surveys
Follow up on abandoned carts
Cross-promote other products
Upsell on recent transactions
Educate their audience
Entertain their audience
Yes, you can do just about anything with an email. But this doesn’t mean that email marketing is an automatic slam dunk. With so many people doing so many things online, inboxes have become a battleground.
You must create compelling emails that catch eyes and drive conversions. And anytime that you’re creating quality content, there will be costs involved.
As with any form of marketing, email marketing costs vary depending on a range of factors. For example, it’s essentially free if you’re running a rudimentary campaign completely on your own. Just fire up your Outlook account and start composing some messages. But there are substantial limitations to this approach, not to mention the time and energy required.
Most businesses choose to partner with a platform that provides all the right tools, streamlines the process, and helps them manage every campaign. Going this route makes it easier to create customized messages, improves the deliverability of your messages, and provides tracking capabilities on the back end.
How much does email marketing cost per month if you pay for an email platform? Small and mid-sized businesses often pay between $50 to $500 per month. Enterprise-level businesses can expect higher price tags due to the scale of their operations. It all comes down to the platform you choose, the frequency and volume of your emails, and the sophistication of your campaigns.
We already know that email delivers impressive ROI, with your messages building engagement and leading to the type of conversions that can really move the needle for your business. But you’ll still need to assess your goals and determine your optimal investment. For many businesses, it’s somewhere between 10% and 20% of their marketing budget.
As you consider your own situation, these factors will play a role:
Industry
Overall monthly revenue
Online-specific monthly revenue
Email marketing capabilities
Email marketing goals
Customers’ communication preferences
Refer to your marketing plan to gather these details and make an informed decision on email marketing costs. If you don’t already have a marketing plan in place, make it a top priority. This document will serve as the roadmap that empowers you to navigate marketing decisions and keep laser-focused on key objectives. It will contain insights into things like your buyer personas and budgets, as well as how you plan to measure results and refine your strategies.
Once you’ve got your marketing plan in place, you’re ready to evaluate the nuts and bolts of your email marketing cost.
Now that you have a better idea of the ballpark costs associated with email marketing, let’s break out more of the individual elements that add to your overall bill. Keep in mind that these expenses are necessary and will bring value to your campaign to ensure that they more than pay for themselves.
In essence, they’re the building blocks that help deliver email marketing’s impressive ROI.
The most important element of a successful email marketing campaign isn’t the emails… it’s the recipients. The old question, “If a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” has relevance here. Your team might write and design the world’s most captivating email, but it won’t even make a whimper if the right people don’t see it.
The first step is building up your email list. Your marketing plan already identifies your buyer personas, so now it’s time to gather and organize the contact information for all these individuals. Whether these leads are coming through display ads, webinars, or in-person meetings at conventions, your efforts will come with a cost.
If you’re a small business, you might plan on paying between 10 cents to 30 cents per email contact. A mid-sized business might spend more like 25 cents to 50 cents per email contact. It all depends on the channels you use and how effective you are in those efforts.
As your list grows, so should your commitment to keeping it healthy. Modern tools make it easy to identify erroneous and duplicate email addresses, as well as recipients who are consistently ignoring your messages. Your email platform will likely provide management resources to keep everything updated and healthy.
By purging these contacts on a quarterly basis, you’ll save money because you’re often charged for the volume of messages you send. And by removing the inactives in your lists, you’ll get better open rates and fewer unsubscribes. This helps you maintain a solid reputation with email service providers like Gmail and Outlook, so they’ll continue sending your messages to recipients’ inboxes. Disorganized businesses sending lots of low-quality emails may find themselves in the proverbial doghouse, with their emails relegated to the junk folder.
If you’re going to put effort into making sure your email gets to the right person, you should also invest in making sure the message is high quality. You can definitely use AI tools to generate subject lines, headlines, and even body copy. However, a human with writing skills is still needed to make sure the composition is strong and aligns with your brand voice and campaign strategies.
Likewise, the design of your emails must be professional and engaging. In the past, this required having a graphic designer on staff. If that’s not possible for your team, you can create top-notch emails using the templates provided by an email platform like SendGrid. Whether you’re sending a quick note about an upcoming event or building out a crucial drip campaign, you’ll find the templates and tools to make them stand out for all the right reasons.
A campaign is only as successful as your ability to track and measure it. Some businesses tackle these tasks manually, using spreadsheets and other tools to enter the relevant data and keep it organized.
But most modern businesses rely on the tools provided by an email platform. Having them integrated within the same system where you’re creating and sending your messages makes it simpler and more accurate.
As you can see, the value of email platforms goes far beyond just sending your messages. You get the tools to create excellent messages, manage your email lists, run your campaigns, and track the results. It’s an effective way to control email marketing costs and take your strategies to the next level.
Of course, there are lots of different platforms on the market, and they don’t all offer a similar level of resources and quality. Start by identifying the essential components you need from your email platform. Next, look to the future and decide which resources will help you continue growing.
Based on this list, you’ll be able to identify platforms that provide what you need at a price that makes sense for your budget.
Twilio SendGrid has a free email marketing plan that provides some critical tools for small operations. Paid subscriptions, which include a much wider range of resources, start at less than $20 a month.
With user-friendly tools and an award-winning support team, Twilio SendGrid can help keep your email marketing as affordable as it is effective. Our experts can help you develop omnichannel strategies that support your business in its current state, while also supercharging you to reach your goals even faster.
