How much does email marketing cost?

Marketing strategies are now evolving; businesses are now focusing on digitization. Hence, this brings us to one of the most crucial digital marketing strategies – email marketing.

Email marketing enables you to reach and engage with a wider audience by sending personalized emails. In fact, the average portion of revenue attributable to email marketing is 19%. Surprised, right?

Well, here we have some exciting statistics about email marketing for you!  

• 31% of the B2B business email marketers believe that email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads. 
• The United States spending on email advertising in 2019 was over $350 million dollars. 
• 64% of businesses use email marketing to reach customers. 

And the list goes on! Here you can find more email marketing statistics for 2024!  

Now, one might wonder if email marketing is so effective, it must involve a cost. Yes, it does, and this article will provide you with an insight into the average email marketing pricing and the factors involved in it.

So, let’s get started!

What is the average cost of an email marketing campaign in 2024? 

Now that you are planning to implement email marketing in your business, you need to ensure that the campaign is well planned. One of the key aspects of planning an email marketing campaign is allocating the budget to your email campaign. 

There can be two scenarios when it comes to the cost of email marketing. 

• You are doing it yourself: If you are doing every part of email marketing yourself, the cost of that can vary from $9 to $1000 per month. Of course, it will also depend on various factors like the type of platform and the number of subscribers. 

• You are outsourcing it to an agency: If you are not doing it yourself and outsourcing it to an email marketing agency, the email marketing cost will be between $300 to $500 per month. For larger enterprises, this number can climb up to $12,000 per month.

No matter in which category you are, your money will not be worth it if you are not getting desired results. The core motive of email marketing is to nurture relationships, retain customers, and garner new ones.

So, you need to look at the bigger picture and consider all the factors that can affect email marketing costs.

What are the factors affecting email marketing costs? 

As mentioned above, email marketing costs can vary based on various factors. Here we are going to study all those factors. So, let’s begin!

1. List size and quality 

One of the primary aspects affecting email marketing cost is the email list size. The subscribers count that you have on the list directly impacts the cost of email marketing. How? 

To automate the email marketing process, you first need email marketing software. And email marketing services have their respective pricing and limits.

On the one hand, Hubspot provides support for 1 million subscribers, but you can send only 2000 emails in a month. While on the other hand, MailChimp has support for only 2000 subscribers but allows you to send 10,000 emails per month. 

There are many other tools like Sender, Moosend, Zoho, etc., that provide email marketing services. You also get features like segmentation, delivery by time zones, templates, etc., with this email marketing software.

Therefore, it is necessary to analyze your needs and then choose the tools. 

2. Monthly email volume 

The monthly email volume is the number of emails sent out to subscribers. It is calculated by multiplying the number of subscribers by the number of emails you send to each of them. 

If you are a growing company, relying on a free plan will not work for you. You will eventually need to upgrade to the paid plan. When it comes to paid plans, you will be looking at spending a minimum of $8 to around $1000 per month. 

Some email marketing platforms offer you only 5000-10,000 monthly emails, whereas some of them can get you even 20 million emails per month. The pricing of the plan will decide the volume and the overall email marketing cost. 

3. The technology used 

When we talk about technology in email marketing, it refers to the features that you can access while using the email marketing software.

Here, if you want to stay within your email marketing budget, you can opt for limited feature access that your company requires at this point. Later on, when your company starts to grow and the subscriber list increases, you can always go for the upgrade.

Here are the four main factors that you need to consider when deciding upon the email marketing software –  

• Segmentation: The ability to segment the list based on various parameters is known as segmentation. You can send an email to a particular, interested set of subscribers that are sure to convert. 
• Delivery by time zones: You can send emails to subscribers across the globe according to their timings.
• Templates: Most of the email marketing services come with pre-built email templates.
• Reporting: The reporting feature allows you to measure your email marketing campaign.

Many other features are provided by email marketing tools. Therefore, you need to choose them wisely to use your marketing budget efficiently.

4. Templates used for sending emails

Design can play an important role in harnessing quality leads. Therefore, a lot of email marketing tools come with pre-built templates, drag and drop builders, and the facility to build custom templates. 

With ready-to-use templates, you can easily set up your email campaigns and make it more compelling. 

However, it also adds to the cost of email marketing. Popular email marketing software like Moosend, MailChimp, Sendinblue, etc., provide 60 to over 100 templates in their paid packages. Therefore, you are looking at $3 to around $1000 dollars a month for the software subscription. 

5. Email marketing automation tools & services

These automation tools are a great addition to your email campaigns. They help you empower your marketing via features like 

• Automated emails 
• Time optimization 
• Personalized emails 
• Dynamic content 
• Subscriber personas 
• eCommerce integration 
• A/B testing 
• Email marketing results tracking 

As these are pretty advanced as well as utilitarian features, they can be found in almost every tool. The overall cost may get increased, but the results will handsomely cover it.

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6. Customer support 

The indispensable feature of an email marketing tool is customer support. Well-established customer support can help the buyer along their journey. 

Moreover, the email marketing cost is also dependent on the customer support features. How? 

Well, if you are purchasing a tool, it will incur costs based on the communication media provided. For instance, support can be provided via email, call, or live chat. All the tools don’t offer all these features, but those who do are expensive. 

7. Hidden costs 

If you are analyzing how much does email marketing cost? You need to carefully examine if there are any surprises involved. Usually, email marketing software companies are pretty transparent. 

However, there can be some add-ons and email limits that you need to be aware of. 

For example, Mailchimp charges based on the number of contacts. Therefore, you will be paying for the number of unsubscribed contacts too. The second example of this is HubSpot. Though it is charged close to $4000 a year, it also has up to a $6000 onboarding fee. 

You need to analyze these aspects before planning your email marketing campaign. 

How to create a budget for your email marketing campaigns? 

If you want results like these, you have to create a budget for your email campaigns. Here are some crucial aspects of that! 

1. Define your goals and targets 

To get the best ROI, you need to set a goal. Email marketing is majorly focused on increasing open rates, bringing in more conversions, improving email CTR, etc. So, you need to finalize what your goal is. 

Once you are crystal clear about that, you can easily estimate the budget for the campaign. 

2. Analyze your past earnings 

It is obviously not your first campaign. Therefore, if you want to allot a budget more efficiently this time, go for analyzing your past campaign earnings. Discover the number of conversions that happened, number of people who opened the email, campaign ROI, amount of clicks, etc., to analyze performance and investment made. This can help you optimize your email marketing strategy.

Based on the report, you can finalize your budget. 

3. Align your budget with the marketing campaigns 

If all the planning is done well, other marketing campaigns can never match the output produced by email marketing on the same budget. For example, PPC campaigns. It proves one thing that your marketing strategy clearly affects the budget. 

Therefore, you need to choose the marketing strategy carefully. You can end up spending way more if not paid attention to this. 

4. Calculate the cost of your planned email campaign 

Once you have done the brainstorming about your goal, past campaign cost, marketing strategy, then all you need is to calculate the average cost of it. Once you have the cost estimate, you can plan a budget that will sustain your campaign for a decided period of time. 

Aspects like CTR, the average value of a conversion, and conversion rate can help you estimate the exact email marketing cost. 

5. Pick the right email automation tool 

A software that allows you to automate your email marketing can be the perfect for estimating how much email marketing is worth. There are numerous email automation tools in the market. However, to decide which one is the best, consider the following factors:

• It should align with your goals 
• It should have features like tagging, behavioral triggering, etc 
• Analytic features 
• Segmentation 
• Templating and drafting features 

Conclusion 

Based on the above points, we can say that email marketing pricing can vary based on various factors. As these factors keep changing, you need to keep a close eye on each of them while planning your campaign. Make sure that you choose the email automation tool wisely and are aware of any hidden costs.