As one of the most lucrative methods for businesses, email marketing is the most crucial channel in the digital marketing world. The costs of email marketing can vary from business to business depending on your ambitions.
Whether you are looking to do every part of email marketing yourself, or you are choosing to outsource to an email marketing agency, you need to ensure that the campaigns are well-planned and profitable. In this article, we will cover every facet of email marketing pricing that aligns with your email marketing budget.
What Is The Typical Cost Of An Email Marketing Campaign?
Email marketing is extremely affordable for small businesses, entrepreneurs, non-profits, or anyone who wants to promote their brand. These services provide an excellent rate of return for most businesses.
The important proposition to consider here is that even if the email marketing costs you face are big, you are likely to earn more if you do it well.
There are two scenarios to consider when you measure the email marketing costs: you are doing everything yourself or outsourcing to an agency.
For someone who decides to do everything themselves, the costs can vary from $9 to $1000 per month. If you outsource to an email marketing agency, the costs range between \$300 to \$500 per month. For larger businesses, the cost can add up to $12000 per month.
Keep in mind that if you are hiring a team or a trained professional to manage different components of email marketing, your costs can climb up, but you might need to outsource only specific tasks.
How Much Does An Email Marketing Agency Cost?
As mentioned before, if you decide to outsource your email marketing to an agency, the costs will range between \$300 to \$500 per month. For larger businesses, a typical agency can cost up to $200 per hour, but it is money well spent if you get the desired outcome.
Since an email marketing agency manages every part of your email marketing campaigns such as marketing research, data management, design, analytics, and split testing, the amount you pay is justified.
Considering how the email marketing ROI is \$42 for every dollar spent on email marketing campaigns, that value is much more than the initial amount you invest in email marketing agencies.
Cost of An Email Service Provider
If you decide to operate alone or have a small business, you will need to avail some email marketing platforms to avoid discrepancies. Your monthly costs will vary depending on the pricing of the email service provider and the kind of email services you wish to use.
Here are some examples to give you a clearer idea: Constant Contact and Moosend have affordable monthly plans that start at $15.58 and $9 respectively. These prices usually include expenses like the size of the monthly email volume and other automation benefits.
For bigger businesses who do not want to opt for an email marketing agency, you can avail the benefits of email service providers such as MailChimp and Hubspot. Their plans check several marketing boxes, including CRM and lead gen solutions.
The good news is that most of these email marketing services offer a free trial so you can see for yourself what works for you.
Factors Affecting The Cost Of An Email Marketing Platform
Email marketing costs are primarily subjective, as they depend on various factors. They can vary from business to business, so we have listed several of them below.
Monthly Email Volume
A monthly email volume is the total number of emails sent out to subscribers. You will need to multiply your total contact list by the number of emails each of them needs to receive in the whole month.
If you are a growing company, it is advisable to go for the plans that meet your monthly email volume.
Some email marketing platforms offer you 5000-10,000 monthly emails, while other service providers like Constant Contact, ActiveCampaign, and Moosend have unlimited volume. The pricing of the plan will decide the volume and subsequently, the entire marketing costs.
Email Templates
Design plays an important role in grabbing the attention of a subscriber and garnering quality leads. A lot of email marketing platforms come with pre-built email templates, drag and drop builders, and custom build templates.
Popular email marketing platforms like Moosend, Zoho, and MailChimp offer 60 to 200 templates in their paid packages that range from $9.99 to $1000. Make sure that all the high-quality templates are responsive and integrated on all devices such as mobile and desktop OS.
List Quality And Size
Apart from the monthly email volume, another factor that affects the email marketing costs is the email list size. Many marketing platforms offer a minimum number of contacts, which usually ranges from 500-1000 contacts.
On one hand, Hubspot allows a list contact size of 1 million subscribers but you can send 2000 emails per month. Email marketing platforms like Sendinblue have no limit on the contact list size, while others stop at 50,000 maximum contacts.
This can differ depending on the price of the package and other features like list segmentation and delivery by time zones. List segmentation is a useful feature where you can send specific emails to only a sub-category of subscribers.
Email Campaign Automation Tools
Email marketing automation is a useful feature that automates workflows for better quality leads. These tools can include:
- A/B testing
- Conversation tracking
- Time optimization
- eCommerce Integration
- Customer profiles
These advanced features can be found in almost every email marketing software; however, plans usually do not come with the automation tool. The cost of email marketing increases with automation tools.
You need to purchase automation tools separately. For instance, Constant Contact's lowest plan begins at $15.58 per month, but its automation tool bears an extra cost that starts at $35.06 per month.
Conclusion
While agencies are an investment, they are not for everyone. Email marketing software is your safest bet if you are a beginner or have a small team.
With the right software and a little research, email campaigns can be successful even in the hands of in-house workers.
