Quotes for email marketing are confusing because three unlike costs are bundled into one conversation. There is the platform, priced by list size or by sends and usually the smallest line. There is the production, somebody writing, designing, building and scheduling, which is labour and is usually the largest. And there is the technical work of making sure the mail arrives, which is invisible, occasional and the most expensive to neglect.
Platform pricing punishes a list you should have cleaned
Most platforms charge by contacts held or by messages sent, which means you pay for addresses that never open anything and, worse, that drag your reputation down. Removing long-inactive contacts lowers the bill and improves delivery at the same time, which is a rare combination. Any supplier proposing a platform without asking how much of your list is actually active is not looking at the right number.
Production is the real cost and it scales with variety
One template sent monthly is cheap. Segmented messages by behaviour or lifecycle stage, each with its own copy and design, is several times the work, and it is also where the return is. Ask for the fee broken into setup and per-campaign production, and establish who writes, who designs and who builds, because agencies differ enormously in what is included.
Automations cost once and pay for years
The sequences that run without anybody touching them, a welcome series, an abandoned basket, a renewal reminder, a lapsed-customer message, are built once and produce revenue continuously. They are the highest-return spend in this channel and they are usually quoted as a setup project. If the budget is tight, build those before committing to any monthly campaign schedule.
Deliverability work is rare, cheap and catastrophic to skip
Authentication records, a sending domain configured properly, list hygiene and complaint monitoring take a competent person a day or two and then occasional attention. Getting it wrong means mail lands in spam folders, which makes every other cost in this channel worthless and can affect your ordinary business mail. Confirm it is in the scope before anything is sent.
Judge it on revenue per message, not on open rates
Open rate stopped being a reliable measure when mail providers began pre-fetching images, and it was always a weak proxy. The number that matters is revenue or enquiries attributable to each message and each automation, and any platform worth using reports it. Agree that as the measure before the first campaign, or the reporting will default to the flattering figures.
Questions people ask about email marketing cost
What does email marketing actually cost?
Three separate bills: the platform, usually the smallest; production, usually the largest and driven by how many different messages you send; and occasional technical work on deliverability. Quotes that bundle them hide which one you are paying for.
Why does my platform bill keep rising?
Because you are charged for contacts or sends, and inactive addresses accumulate. Removing long-inactive contacts lowers the bill and improves delivery simultaneously, which few other changes do.
What should we build first on a small budget?
The automations: welcome, abandoned basket, renewal, lapsed customer. They are built once and produce revenue continuously, which is a better use of a limited budget than a monthly campaign schedule.
Are open rates still meaningful?
Not reliably, since mail providers began pre-fetching images. Measure revenue or enquiries per message and per automation, which any competent platform reports and which is what you were actually buying.