Every business should define an action plan and review it monthly or quarterly. That plan and its different marketing actions will come with a budget for each of its areas.
One of the items to include in this budget is the cost of sending mailings. Likewise, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll also need to plan your actions around a set budget so you invest reasonably and sustainably.
Whenever you allocate a budget to marketing actions, you need to look for profitability with the best possible value for money.
When it comes to how much email marketing costs, we’ll assess its price based on the features, service and results offered by the tool in question.
Even though email marketing is a powerful sales tool, do you really need to spend a lot to put its strategy into practice?
In this article, I invite you to think about it. In fact, we’re going to look at:
- What the mailing prices of the different software options depend on.
- How to save on your budget while still getting a good solution.
- Whether or not it’s worth paying a high price for bulk mailing.
· How much does email marketing cost? Factors
When calculating your mailing budget, you’ll need to consider a number of factors so you get an excellent service and, at the same time, a positive return on investment (ROI).
The most expensive option isn’t always the one with the most features or the one that best fits your needs. You need to assess what each tool offers you and whether you really need everything it includes.
The selection criteria will vary depending on the size of your business and the plan you choose in each case.
However, there are some basic requirements you should analyze:
â—Ź Template vs custom coding:
Most software includes templates to make editing your emails easier. However, you should know that the mailing budget is higher if you opt for custom coding than if you use templates.
In any case, with Mailrelay it’s very easy to create your newsletters with the drag-and-drop editor:
â—Ź Database size:
This is the requirement that makes this kind of tool most expensive.
It can considerably affect the price of bulk mailing. In Mailrelay’s case, it goes from €0 a month for 20,000 subscribers to €1,470 a month (Standard plan) for 2,000,000 subscribers.
â—Ź Sending volume:
Along with the size of the database, this is the factor that most influences the cost of mailing.
For example, Mailrelay’s prepaid packages range from €0 for 80,000 emails to €1,470 (Standard plan) for 10,000,000 emails.
â—Ź Statistics features:
These features are very useful for optimizing your emailing strategy based on real information. The most basic ones to consider are open, click, reply, bounce and spam rates.
â—Ź Watermark in emails (advertising in the form of logos, etc.):
Many platforms add a watermark to the footer of the emails you send in their cheapest versions.
If you don’t want that, you’ll need to factor it into your mailing budget.
â—Ź Sending time:
This is one of the most useful features for marketers.
It lets you create an email and schedule it to be sent at a different time.
That way the task is done and you don’t have to worry about forgetting to send it at the right time.
â—Ź Number of users:
If 5 to 10 people work in your company’s marketing department, you should consider giving all of them access to the email marketing tool.
This makes your emailing budget more expensive, but it makes the team’s work easier.
â—Ź Other support-related costs:
Just as with custom email coding, we may incur other expenses for consulting or professional support if the tool we’re using doesn’t offer it for free (as Mailrelay does).
These factors will help you choose one software or another based on your emailing budget, interests and needs. Keep in mind that even if your database is small at first, it will grow.
· How much does sending an email to a large database cost?
Having a large database, if it’s a quality one, shouldn’t lead to a bad investment decision in email marketing.
On the other hand, you should avoid tools that are free at first or have low prices but compromise your brand image with poor service.
For example, with Mailrelay the price of bulk mailing increases with the number of subscribers and the number of emails sent, but it does so gradually and in fairly generous steps.
In addition, its free version offers excellent support and features that let you operate when you’re starting out:
· Mailing budget: how to save on costs?
Taking into account the factors for choosing a tool that fits your mailing budget while guaranteeing good results, you can apply a number of practices to save on email marketing costs.
Below are some ideas to get more out of your budget and investment:
â–ş Optimize bulk mailing costs with a quality list
Focus on getting qualified leads for your list. That is, subscribers who are really interested in what you offer, whether products or services.
To do that, it’s essential to capture them by exchanging their details for valuable resources. Create a form on your website and offer those who fill it in a resource that answers their big questions.
Also, avoid buying databases. This has many drawbacks, but the biggest of all is that you’ll be sending emails to people who don’t know you and have no interest whatsoever in doing so (you’ll be wasting effort and budget).
â–ş Improve the ROI of your mailing investment with the subject line
The subject line of an email is the calling card for what comes next. If it isn’t attractive, users won’t feel motivated to open it and read the content.
As a result, this will affect the profit you can get from your bulk mailing costs.
Imagine you send an email announcing a new product or a promotion. If the open rate is low, so will be the conversions it generates.
So the subject line is one of the key pieces for achieving the goals set with this tool and for answering the question of how much an email send costs.
â–ş Send on the day and at the time with your best metrics
Analyze the results of previous sends and change the day and time you send your emails (if necessary). Experience gives you information you can use to improve, and here’s an example:
â—Ź If this is the first time you’re sending emails, schedule them for different days of the week, study how the users in your database behave and make decisions.
â—Ź If the best response comes on Wednesdays at noon, build sending on that day and time into your strategy.
Every database is different and, although as a rule there are days when the open rate is higher, my advice is to test with your own users. That way your actions will be based on real data.
â–ş Clean your databases to get more out of your mailing costs
Over time, it’s normal for a percentage of the people who subscribed to your list to lose interest in what you offer, because they no longer have that need, they’ve moved past that stage, they found an alternative…
So, to avoid paying a mailing fee for bulk sends to a database that ignores you, you’ll need to run a cleanup campaign regularly to remove inactive users.
*For example, if someone hasn’t opened your emails for more than 6 months, they could be a candidate for leaving the list.
You can choose the criteria based on your business and your actions. Because if your last send was 3 months ago, the previous condition may not be valid.
â–ş Include a CTA and increase the conversion rate
Remember to add a call to action to all your emails. Otherwise, users will simply read your emails and do nothing else. If you add a CTA, they’ll likely click and the email will generate some kind of conversion.
And I’m not just talking about sales. A conversion can be reading a post on your blog, following you on social media, sharing some content, attending a free webinar…
Whatever it is, this practice multiplies the return you can get from your bulk mailing campaigns.
â–ş Avoid overwhelming your list
The best approach is to work with a planned calendar that sets the dates of your sends. That way you’ll know when and how many emails you’ve sent to your list in the last month.
â—Ź If you send too often, you’ll probably end up overwhelming your users, and a percentage of them will stop opening your emails. That would increase your bulk mailing cost per email.
â—Ź If, on the other hand, you only send occasionally, when there’s a launch or promotional campaign, you may be seen as spam and your open rate will suffer.
*A tip: always add valuable content and set a moderate frequency.
â–ş Choose a mailing plan that fits your needs
When you’re about to sign up for emailing software, review its plans and prices carefully. You’ll see there are price differences depending on the features offered.
Ideally, analyze what your business needs right now. And choose the one that meets your requirements and lets you upgrade without too big a jump in investment.
*For example, regarding the number of subscribers, a free plan may be enough at first, but when you have 100,000 subscribers you’ll want your mailing plan to be as cost-effective as possible.
· Should you pay a high price for bulk mailing?
Based on what we’ve seen here, what do you think? Do you think you need to make a big investment to implement an email marketing strategy?
Here’s my opinion… There are always exceptional cases of large companies that need customized solutions, and that makes bulk mailing costs soar because they have a custom-built tool with more specific features or because of the volume of emails they need to send.
As a rule, my answer is no. I don’t think you need to spend a lot to enjoy the best features.
In this post, I’ve given you a number of factors so you can understand how much email marketing costs, along with recommendations to save on your budget and get a better ROI.
Now you need to align them with the needs of your business or company and make the best decisions. Analyze, compare and act!
Choosing your email template carefully and maintaining good email list hygiene are two of the simplest ways to reduce these costs.
