Isn’t it exciting when a marketing strategy generates an extremely high ROI—$44 for every $1 spent? Yes, Try email marketing. The email marketing sector has grown to become a giant industry.
A recent study says the market for email marketing was estimated at $7.5 billion in 2020 and is expected to increase to $17.1 billion by 2027. (Statistica, 2022)
Start simultaneously reaching out to clients and prospects using email marketing, but plan your budget first. This article answers how much to charge for email marketing services, where most email marketers get puzzled.
Let’s get started.
Myths exist in the email marketing industry too; Are they true?
You will find countless myths that often discourage willing entrepreneurs to make a decision. Let’s go over some of these pricing myths that are evidently not true.
Myth: Email marketing pricing is too expensive and hard to bear.
Fact – This myth is not the truth and prices are small investments with a high ROI.
Myth: Email marketing is dead now.
Fact – The truth is that, nowadays, people prefer email marketing more than social media marketing.
Myth: An agency will be rich quickly if it charges too much for email marketing.
Fact – Not valid. Your clients would choose other agencies that charge less.
Myth: Email marketing business will cost less than doing it yourself.
Fact – This saying doesn’t seem right because the cost will be cheaper if you do this on your own.
How Much to Charge for an Email Marketing Campaign?
Depending on the extent of the job, each email marketing service may charge anywhere from $300 to $2000 a month. Payment also varies according to the pricing strategy you offer to the clients. There are two types of payment options available for implementation- Hour-based and project-based.
Hour Based
Hour-based charging is the most tricky method of pricing for email marketing. The charge is determined by the number of hours required to complete the task. Here, email marketing costs can vary from 120$ to 250$.
Since it’s not always easy to predict how long an activity will take to finish, new agencies and clients with limited funds avoid hourly pricing most of the time. However, many established agencies prefer to be charged hourly.
Project Based
A project-based charge is a simpler alternative to hourly-based pricing. There are three types of automation emails in a project-based email marketing campaign – Welcome emails automation, Abandonment cart email automation, and post-purchase email automation. Each of the three automation will have 1-3 emails.
Three emails per flow configuration will cost between $3000 and $6000, depending on its complexity. In project-based email marketing packages, one client gets around 7–10 different flows, with 30–40 emails overall.
This is a good option for clients that are happy to manage the campaign themselves but don’t want to write or design emails.
Remember, your proposal should clearly say what exact services clients will be getting for their money. Break down your plan with an hourly estimate.
Factors that Determine Email Marketing Price
- Yearly income
- The products or services you provide
- The size of the industry
- The aim of digital marketing
- Modern technology that you use
How to Find Hidden Costs?
91% of people don’t read a contract. A Deloitte (2017) survey has proven that people agree to contracts without reading them.
Since reading is boring and time-consuming in today’s busy world, we often miss the hidden cost. Let us tell you to proven techniques to discover the hidden costs of email marketing-
- Find an expert who understands all terms and conditions. It can be a lawyer or anyone who has ample knowledge in this field. Sometimes, a degree doesn’t matter, but skill does. They will explain the hidden costs to you if it is written in jargon.
- Apparently, the easiest one. Ask people who are the current customers. You can ask each ESP about their experiences and collect feedback from them. Don’t forget to ask about the pricing and any unpleasant surprises.
Answer These Questions Before Budgeting For Email Marketing:
Do some research before investing anything into email marketing and find out how your aim is lined up with your business plan.
We suggest asking some questions yourself to find the aim of your business. This step also helps people to budget better.
- What types of emails are you going to send? – advertising, newsletters, or online stores?
- How many emails do you intend to send each month?
- What is your plan for gaining subscribers, and how will your email list expand over the next two to three years?
- What commercial goals do you want to achieve with email marketing?
- What type of branding and style do you want for your emails?
- Do you wish to pick an ESP with templates, or do you need outside help?
- What opportunities are you passing up by not investing in email marketing?
- Have you used any ESPs before making a decision?
If you have all the answers to these questions, then congratulations! You are done with planning. Now the next step is budgeting in a better way.
How to Plan and Budget for Email Marketing
Nowadays, email marketing is more effective than 40% of social media marketing such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and other platforms. The reason is that 91% of people in the USA use emails daily as they feel comfortable. (McKinsey, 2014).
So, planning your budget before opting for email marketing campaigns can bring better and higher outcomes. We say, You can never do things cheaply, but you can always be wise while doing this.
- For affordable rates, check out different email marketing companies such as Nautilus Mail, ActiveCampagin, and Mailerlite. They have different packages for email marketing. Find a suitable package for your business.
- Do another thing while budgeting. Start with a basic but completely functional email marketing system for less than $10 for a whole month if you’re prepared to handle it yourself.
How to Create Packages for Email Marketing Services in 2022?
Prepare An Email Marketing Strategy
Preparing email marketing strategies permits you to determine your target audience. Besides, you can define your competitors by making a proper strategy. Make a marketing plan as well to proceed correctly.
Creating a proper email marketing strategy lets you know your market situation and analyze the market and clients. Based on this, you can fix the pricing. But it is better to charge 50$ per hour. Depending on your target audience, you can charge a little less or a little more. The time should be 4-6 hours.
Create Service Email Provider
You have to develop a website by using WordPress. To attract clients, add some specific services in this section.
Your customer might need forms on landing sites for particular email campaigns. Add this service here. Don’t forget to create an account with ESP for the clients.
Set up any required connections to support your customer in tracking email lists and evaluating their performance.
You might need to train your client to operate their email service provider (ESP). Add this service here. If needed, train them on how to produce content, send marketing emails, and track their effectiveness, depending on how they want to proceed with various aspects of their email marketing.
The charge for this service is considerably high as clients get access to a lot more features. Still, keep it affordable for everyone. It should be between 250$-400$ and the time should be 6-8 hours. Charge 50$ per hour.
Clean Existing List before Sending Emails and Review
Your clients want to send their newsletters to as many contacts as possible. You must think about ways to keep your clients out of trouble since this can fall under spamming.
Start with reviewing the existing list. Verify that subscribers are on the mailing list. The recipients can agree to receive emails from your client by asking and responding positively.
Clean the lists that are one year older. It’s essential to maintain and update aged email lists. Applying third-party subscriber verification tools, such as those in our post 20 Best Tools for Testing Emails, clean lists that are older than 12 months.
Watch out for lists that haven’t been used in more than six months. There could be a lot of invalid email addresses on these lists. Remember to periodically update these lists..
Before you send them a mass email, email each subscriber on the list to confirm them. . This process is known as subscriber reconfirming.
You are responsible for letting your clients know about all the charges and risks. They will do whatever they feel is right.
The time of this service is 2-3 hours so the charge should be 100$-150$.
Set-Up Automatic Response
Do you know that 127 business emails are sent per day? To control a massive load of emails, 55% of ecommerce marketers use software to send automatic responses.
Set up as many autoresponders as you like to support your clients to get results.
Add welcome emails, win back emails, review emails, abandoned cart emails, review emails and product recommendation emails, and so on.
Hire talented copywriters who will create these email contents for you.
So the charge should be 50%-100$ and the time should be 1-2 hours per email.
Create Contents
Emails are nothing without content. Work with your customers to determine the appropriate content to send to achieve their desired outcomes and how to develop it based on their email marketing goals and available company resources.
Emails contents include writing a regular newsletter, writing subject lines, writing promotional emails, and writing autoresponders.
While creating content, keep in mind who is the target audience at first. Then, write by focusing on one point, use conversational language in a formal tone, and use simple language.
The time and charge of this service will depend on the client’s requirements and your capability to provide the content.
Track Everything and Repost Result
Email marketing is easy to track. You can see statistics on who responded to each campaign you send by. You can easily find the statistics of how many people have opened the emails, clicked on the link, clicked on your CTA, and so on.
After getting all the statistics, don’t forget to report your customer and show them the impacts of email marketing. Clients will be able to compare campaign statistics against KPIs.
Don’t forget to keep maintenance lists. Ensure your client’s email list is clean by routinely removing inactive subscribers.
Always remember to keep listing segments. As your client’s original email list expands over time, it will be required to segment subscribers and begin delivering more targeted marketing.
This service mostly takes 3-5 hours. So charge 50$ per hour.
FAQs
What Amount Should One Spend on Email Marketing?
Spend between 6 and 8% of the yearly income on email marketing if it is less than $1 million. Not more than that. If your business generates between $2 and $4 million annually, 2-4 percent of your overall income is appropriate. if it exceeds $5 million, 1 percent is more than adequate.
What Is The Potential Revenue from Email Marketing?
Depending on the skills, agencies that provide email marketing services might charge between $50 and $250 per hour. You can earn at least $35 from email marketing if you are a top-rated freelancer on the websites.
How does the email industry generate income?
Email businesses generate income in the following ways:
- Offering server and software services
- Supporting other business products
- By selling luxury goods
- Providing services for email marketing
- Cross-selling similar products
How Is The Cost of Email Marketing Determined?
The price is determined by the number of emails you require each month. Know the price per email (often between $250 and $700 and includes the whole procedure) and calculate. Your monthly email marketing expense will be $5,000 if you require ten emails, and the firm charges you $500 for each email.
Endnote
Email marketing services are more reliable than doing one-off work. They work wonderfully with a retainer pricing model. However, you can always create packages using an automated email platform such as Nautilusmail. You can now easily choose the best fit for your business as you know how much to charge for email marketing.
