How Much Does Email Marketing Cost?

Email marketing cost averages between $51 and $1000 per month for email marketing software and agency services.

Email marketing software itself is generally priced between $18 and $420 per month for companies with 100k contacts or less. Outsourcing your campaigns to a freelancer or agency will add an extra few hundred or even thousands of dollars.

With such a large range of pricing, how can you figure out what the email marketing cost for your company will be? And is it even worth investing in?

In this guide, we’ll explain why email marketing is a worthwhile investment and factors that impact cost so you can budget accordingly.

5 reasons why you should invest in email marketing

Yes, email marketing can certainly be a significant investment. But it’s also a worthwhile investment that can greatly benefit your business.

Here are five reasons why you should be investing in email marketing:

1. Build credibility and brand awareness

Email marketing is a great relationship-building tool, which in turn will improve your brand’s image and credibility.

When someone opts into your email list, they’re inviting you into their inbox. The direct nature of email allows you to establish a more personal relationship where subscribers are more likely to interact with you, share feedback, or buy your products.

Email is also great for building up word of mouth. As you communicate with your audience, you’ll slowly build trust with them — which can have a huge ripple effect over time.

For example, your happy subscribers will likely be more inclined to share your brand with friends, leading to increased sales.

Or, they may forward one of your emails to an acquaintance, who then subscribes to your list. These rewards compound over time.

2. Communicate with your audience directly

Email is more likely to be successfully delivered to your audience than other forms of marketing. Around 79% of emails land in the intended recipient’s inbox.

Compare that to social media, where there’s only a chance that your followers will actually see your content in their feed.

Most social media platforms have done away with chronological feeds, which can throw a major wrench in your marketing if you’re trying to promote something time sensitive.

Subscribers may see your post days later than what you intended — if they even see it at all.

The real-time nature of email marketing ensures you have a line of communication with your audience that you’re directly in control of.

3. Increase website traffic

In a world of frequent Google updates, organic traffic isn’t as reliable as it once was. Social media platforms — another major traffic driver — are gearing their designs to keep users on their platforms rather than sending them to your business website.

Email traffic, compared to organic and social traffic, isn’t at the mercy of any of these algorithms.

Another reason email is so great at driving website traffic is because of the ability you have to send targeted emails to different segments of subscribers. The more engaged your audience is, the more likely they’ll be to click through to your website.

Not only that, but highly targeted and personalized communications drive higher quality traffic — people that are much more likely to actually become paying customers.

This can also work to decrease your website’s bounce rate over time.

4. It’s easy to measure ROI

One of the biggest pain points for many marketers is effectively measuring return on investment (ROI).

With email marketing, most of the available tools and software out there have built-in tracking features that allow you to easily measure your campaigns.

For example, the majority of tools give you the ability to look at metrics like:

• Delivery rates
• Bounce rates
• Unsubscribe rates
• Open rates
• Clickthrough rates

Not only is email marketing ROI easy to measure, but it also usually has a relatively high return as well. In fact, 82% of businesses say they’re satisfied with the return on investment they receive from email marketing.

5. Target specific groups of customers

Email marketing allows for more targeted messaging, so it’s often more effective compared to other forms of marketing.

Social media posts are shown to all of your followers (and even some non-followers) regardless of which stage of the buying cycle they’re in.

And although you do have the ability to segment when launching paid ad campaigns, you don’t have precise control over who sees them.

With email marketing, you can segment your subscriber list and send different campaigns to each list. For example, you could create separate, targeted campaigns for both brand new subscribers and your loyal customers.

Alternatively, you could segment your email list by demographics, geographical location, subscriber behavior, or marketing preferences.

Factors that impact the cost of mmail marketing

Now, let’s break down some of the biggest factors that impact email marketing cost so you can get a better idea of what to expect.

Number of subscribers

Most email marketing platforms are priced based on the number of emails you send out each month. So the more subscribers you’re sending emails to, the higher the total cost will be.

Tip: You can lower your email marketing cost by regularly going through your subscriber lists and unsubscribing people who haven’t opened or interacted with your emails for a while.

Campaign frequency

As mentioned above, the more emails you send — the more your email marketing will cost.

You can expect the price of whatever email marketing tool you’re using to increase/decrease in correlation to how many campaigns you’re sending out each month.

Email design

Email marketing tools generally have customization limits on their lower tier plans. If you want to have complete control over your email design, you’ll likely need to pay more.

Tools that have drag-and-drop editors can save you time and make it easy to do the email creation yourself for free.

If you want fully custom designs for your email campaigns, you may need to hire someone who knows HTML, which will substantially increase your cost.

Email acquisition cost

Email acquisition cost tracks the average amount of money it takes to get new email subscribers on your list. If you already have an established email list, your EAC may be low.

However, if you’re just getting started with email marketing, you may need to spend money on advertising to grow your list. This isn’t a required expense of email marketing, but it can be a wise investment if your goal is to grow quickly.

DIY or done-for-you

This is the factor that will have the greatest impact on the total cost of your email marketing. It’s totally possible to do your own email marketing — in which case, you’ll only be out the cost of the email provider you decide to use.

However, it’s important to consider the value of your time. It may make more sense to offload the task to a freelancer or agency. This will considerably increase your costs to the tune of hundreds or even thousands per month.

Is it worth outsourcing email marketing?

Outsourcing your email marketing to a freelancer or digital marketing agency can be a good investment if you don’t have the capital to hire an in-house marketer or simply don’t have time to create and manage campaigns yourself.

For small businesses that aren’t bringing in enough revenue to hire a full-service marketing agency, freelancers are often more cost-effective.

Solo freelancers typically specialize in a single or handful of services and many charge per project, meaning you won’t be tied to a monthly retainer price.

This is ideal for SMBs who want to try email marketing but aren’t necessarily ready to invest long-term yet.

At the end of the day, outsourcing your email marketing can be worth it, but you should weigh the cost of saving time vs. saving money before making a decision.

Final thoughts

Email marketing is a necessary investment for SMBs. While the cost of email marketing can vary widely, between $51 and $1000 per month is generally to be expected.

Now that you have an idea of what to expect pricing-wise, it’s time to hit the ground running with your email campaigns.

At SMB Guide, we review some of the best and most popular email marketing softwares so you can easily find the right tool for you.

Check out our latest marketing reviews to get started.

FAQs