How Much Does Email Marketing Cost?
If you want to know how much does email marketing cost, then you’re probably looking to start an email marketing campaign. (Gee, thanks Captain Obvious!)
That’s a smart move on your part. If I only had one way to marketing a business, email marketing would be it. When done right, I think email marketing is the most effective marketing and sales tool out there.
But we’ll save that discussion for another article. Here we’re going to look at what email marketing costs.
How Much Does Email Marketing Cost?
There are a few components to an email marketing campaign. Which ones you use and how you handle them will determine how much your costs are. Let’s unpack this a bit so you have a better idea of what you’re looking at.
Email Marketing Software
In order to do email marketing, you need a way to send emails. (Captain Obvious strikes again!)
To do that you’ll need some sort of software to compose, manage, send, etc. your emails.
You could just use a free email platform like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, etc. But unless you’re doing low volume, highly targeted email marketing, I wouldn’t recommend this option. To do true, effective email marketing, you’re gonna need more than this.
The first option for doing “real” email marketing is a free option from an email marketing platform like MailChimp. This gives you access to email marketing features that Gmail and others don’t have like some automations and a basic CRM.
If you’re just dipping your toes into email marketing and have a small list, then this may be a good way to get started. But you will be VERY limited in what you can do. Which is why paying for email marketing software is the way to go for most.
There are a boat load of email marketing software options out there. Some of the ones I’ve used in the past include aWeber, Constant Contact and ActiveCampaign.
Plans start at around $10 or so a month and can reach $1000+ for the most complex email marketing products. Also, if you have a large email list, expect costs to be higher.
For most businesses, however, you can figure on finding a good option that meets most of your needs in the $50 – $150 a month range.
Email Lists
If you’re planning to buy or rent an email list for your campaign, that’s gonna cost you. Figure around $300 for a B2C list and a little more $450 or so on average for a B2B list.
However, the best email list is one you grow organically. So, for most businesses, we recommend staying away from buying/renting lists.
Copywriting
If you plan to write your own emails, then there are no hard costs here. Just your time.
If you plan to have someone write your emails for you, however, then you have to figure those costs into the email marketing mix.
The cost to hire a copywriter will vary wildly. It can range from $50 to $5000+ per email. And some of the most experienced writers may charge a flat fee plus royalties from sales their emails generate.
What you end up paying depends not just on the experience level of the writer. The type of emails you need written matter too. Are they sales emails, informational, to a cold audience, to past buyers, long or short emails, is a lot of research required, etc.?
Bottom line here, a good copywriter is worth their weight in gold. Going cheap on this will cost you in the long run.
