Email marketing is the elixir for most marketers who wish to attract new prospects while maintaining the relation with existing customers. Even though most marketers are drawn towards email marketing owing to claims of getting $34 in return for every $1 spent on email marketing, they fail to understand a crucial point – how and where you invest the $1 determines the returns you can reap from your marketing campaigns.
This article will highlight the areas where campaign managers invest their money (and time).
Your ROI depends on your marketing budget
Your marketing budget as well as the different channels you use along with your emails define your ROI.
It generally depends on:
- Your annual revenue
- Type of company i.e. B2B or B2C
- Your products / services
- Overall online revenue generated
- Goals of your campaigns
A break up of email marketing budget
Ironically, a fraction of your marketing budget goes to develop the heart of your email campaign i.e. the email template. Most of the budget goes in preparing and supporting the campaign.
Tools Subscription
Email marketing involves sending emails to thousands of subscribers at a time. It is advisable not to use free webmail services such as Gmail or Yahoo! to send your emails as they come with certain limitations:
- You can only send 500 emails each day using Gmail SMTP
- You can only send plain text emails with images and other multimedia as attachments
- Restricted scope of personalization
- High chances of emails being marked as SPAM by ISP filters.
- No scope of segmentation
So, you need to avail the services of an ESP in order to send emails to all your subscribers at once and a CRM to store and process the information collected from your subscribers. A chunk of the marketing budget goes in availing the subscriptions of tools that you need to manage your email campaigns.
Most common tools that an email marketer uses are:
- ESP
- CRM
- Lead generation forms
- Email validation services
- Email list management
You can further read about the different tools you need in an email campaign here .
Email and Landing Page Templates
Even though most ESPs provide a library of pre-designed email templates, you need to develop a custom email template in order to avoid looking like a run-of-the-mill brand. An email template is made of a hero image, email copy, relevant visual elements, an actionable call-to-action and a CAN-SPAM compliant footer.
Depending on whether you create one yourself or get it developed, you need to allocate a budget for your email templates. This involves developing the template, testing it across different email clients and making ESP specific changes.
We can create a pixel perfect email as per your design file within 8 hours TAT for $59. You can avail your first order for free as well.
The landing page should be consistent to your email templates and you need to factor this cost too, when planning an email campaign.
Advertising
While emails are a great way to acquire new prospects, you need to rely on ads to rope in new customers. Investing in solid Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is vital for reaching your target audience solely on the base of your customer persona. Bidding to remain visible in the search results of different search engine platforms such as Google and Bing! means you need to calculate and accommodate the cost per click and cost per acquisition.
Copy writing costs
While this may not be applicable for every brand, seeking professional help for writing engaging and actionable copy for your emails and landing pages also needs to be factored in. Be it for writing an email copy or even for translation into different languages, campaign managers need to avail these services in order to ensure a perfect email.
Staff costs or agency outsourcing cost
Whether you manage your email campaigns in-house or outsource it to an email marketing agency, you can easily spend $9 ~ $1000/ month on staffing costs or $300 – $500 / month to agencies. This includes the cost of hiring & training resources for your team.
Time
As the old adage goes “Time is Money”, every second you invest in your email campaigns impacts your marketing budget and in turn the returns expected. While email automation has reduced the time spent on email campaigns, setting them up and testing the workflows has a running cost to it.
How to reduce cost without cutting corners
Every campaign manager has to work around tight budgets and deadlines, while good performance is expected from them. Here are some common tips to subsequently reduce costs.
Modular Email Templates
While one-off emails have a visual flair that sets them apart from other emails, creating a new email template for every email campaign can dry out your marketing budget soon. By investing in a modular email template, you can create ready-to-send emails on the fly without compromising on the visual attractiveness of your email templates.
Periodically scrub out dormant and low LTV customers
Trying to revive a lost customer is like flogging a dead horse. They both result in wasted efforts. Most ESPs charge you on the basis of subscriber count in your mailing list and if your mailing list is filled with dormant customers, low lifetime value (LTV) customers or wrong email addresses, you will lose money on them. Periodically cleaning your mailing list not only improves your email campaign performance, but also helps monetarily by saving extra dollars.
Invest in an agency
Managing your email campaigns in-house gives you more control over the campaigns, but it eats up a large chunk of your time, especially when you hit a roadblock. By outsourcing your email campaigns to an agency, you gain the expertise at a fractionally higher cost, but it saves money in the long run.
We own campaign management service has a strong team of 150+ campaign managers who have the expertise of working with 50+ ESPs and setting up hundreds of email campaigns.
Wrapping Up
Based on your business model and your target audience, your marketing budget may vary. By analyzing the above given factors, you can get a clear picture of how to allocate your budget and gain the most out of it. By investing in a good email marketing platform, charting out a strong campaign strategy and reaching out to the correct audience can significantly reduce the chances of you wasting money.