Very few marketing channels are as fast, enduring, and rewarding as email. The channel continues to offer a direct line to customers’ inboxes, making it one of the most effective ways to reach and engage your audience—even roughly four decades after its invention.
And it keeps getting better.
In 2023, around 52% of marketing professionals reported double the improvement in their email marketing campaigns’ return on investment (ROI) rates. Email marketing revenue is also expected to surpass $9.5 billion in 2024.
Besides that, emails have also become easier and more affordable to send. There are multiple high ROIs and low-cost estimates online. But just how accurate are they? How much does email marketing cost? And is email still worth your firm’s investment in 2024?
This article will break down the actual cost of an email in 2024, but let’s start with some basics.
What is an email marketing cost?
The cost of email marketing represents the investments you need to make to connect with your audience effectively through email campaigns. This means the price of all the expenses associated with creating, sending, analyzing, and optimizing your email campaigns.
Remember, this also includes other indirect aspects that help you run successful email marketing campaigns. Some of these include content creation, advanced analytics, email list management, and even the salaries of your in-house or outsourced marketing team.
Importance of budgeting
It is close to impossible to run successful email campaigns without proper budgeting. Here’s why:
- Strategic allocation of funds: Budgeting provides a clear financial framework that will guide you in allocating funds to the various aspects of email marketing to get the best results. For instance, you can prioritize spending on high-impact areas that drive more engagement and conversions.
- Monitoring expenses: With a great email marketing budget, you always know exactly where your money goes. This prevents unexpected expenses that can derail a campaign or cause companies to spend beyond their financial capabilities.
- Measuring your ROI: By comparing the costs of email marketing campaigns to the revenue generated, you can easily evaluate your campaigns’ effectiveness. This will also provide valuable insights into how you can adjust your email marketing strategies in real time to achieve better performance and higher ROI.
- Promoting accountability: Budgeting will encourage accountability within your marketing team. Everyone will make thoughtful decisions that align with your financial limits and goals. This may promote creativity since the marketers will be looking for more innovative but cost-effective solutions.
- Ensuring long-term growth: Effective budgeting supports long-term growth by ensuring your email marketing strategy is efficient and financially sustainable. This means you will only invest in strategies and tools that will continuously lead to great campaign results that boost your business’s overall growth over time.
Each one of these benefits proves that budgeting is one of the key foundations of effective email marketing.
Failing to budget for your email marketing will lead to poorly executed campaigns, missed opportunities, poor ROI, and inefficient spending that strains your marketing budget.
How do you set your budget for email marketing?
Now that you understand the why of budgeting, let’s discuss the how. So, how do you properly budget for your email marketing?
Here are a few steps you should follow:
Define your objectives
Start by outlining what you hope to achieve with your email marketing campaigns. Whether it’s increasing sales, boosting engagement, increasing customer loyalty, or reducing cart abandonment, your goals will help determine where to allocate your budget.
For instance, if your primary goal is to increase sales, you will need to channel more funds toward promotional emails and special offers. However, if your core goal is building brand awareness, you must allocate more funds toward creating engaging content and great email designs.
If you’re a small business with a limited marketing budget, you will need to prioritize certain goals over others. Determine which objectives are most critical to your business at the current stage and allocate your budget accordingly.
After you’ve defined your goals, ensure you identify and set the key metrics that will help you measure the progress you make with your efforts. Your metrics should align with the goals set.
For instance, if your goal is to reduce cart abandonment, you will measure the conversion rate of your cart abandonment emails.
Assess your current resources
To budget for your future campaign effectively, you must first understand what resources you have or those you lack.
To do this, start by examining your financial situation. Take stock of your overall marketing budget and determine how much of it you can realistically allocate to email marketing.
Then, assess your total marketing expenditures based on the spending of your past campaigns. This will help keep your budget realistic and aligned with your financial limits later on.
Remember, your resources also include your current in-house team and tools. So, consider their capabilities and determine if they can help you execute your email strategy effectively.
If there are any gaps in expertise, you may need to allocate part of your budget to hiring freelancers or an agency. Also, determine if upgrades are necessary for your current tools and software.
Set your budget
Once you clearly understand your financial situation, create a realistic budget that aligns with your business goals.
You can provide cost estimates for each component of your email marketing strategy, from the email marketing platform fees to content creation.
Conduct extensive market research and refer to your previous spending on each component to keep these estimates as accurate as possible. You can use the Clutch template below to create your budget.
Remember to prioritize areas that align with your goals and have shown positive ROI in the past. But, ensure your budget is flexible enough to accommodate any changes or opportunities that may arise.
For instance, you can include a contingency plan for unexpected email marketing costs or adjustments. This proactive approach will keep your budget sustainable and adaptable to evolving business needs.
Monitor and refine
You must regularly monitor your spending and campaign performance to ensure your budget remains relevant to your needs and goals at all times.
So use analytics from your email marketing tools and other platforms like Google Analytics to monitor your email marketing efforts ROI, then adjust your email marketing budget as needed. If a particular strategy or tool delivers exceptional results, consider reallocating more funds to it.
In addition, after each campaign, conduct a thorough analysis to evaluate the performance against your set goals and budget. Then, use the valuable insights to refine your budgeting approach for future campaigns.
Expenses incurred for outsourcing email marketing
You can choose two options when outsourcing your email marketing needs: Freelancers or email marketing agencies.
Each option has its own set of costs, benefits, and limitations. Ensure you fully understand these details to make informed budgetary decisions.
Here’s a detailed look at the costs associated with two:
1. Freelancer services
Freelancers offer specialized skills for specific tasks within your email strategy. They typically charge by the project or hour, making it easier to control costs.
As a result, using freelancer services is a great option for small businesses or specific projects that require a cost-effective option.
Let’s explore the primary email marketing pricing structures for freelancers further:
- Project-based fees: You can procure a freelancer’s email marketing service for a specific task, like designing or managing an email marketing campaign. Of course, the price will depend on the project scope.
Freelancers’ project-based charges can range from $50 for simple tasks to $5000+ for more complex projects.
- Retainer-based pricing: Some freelancers also work on a retainer. This means you will be paying them a fixed monthly fee for their services, which ranges from $500 to $5000 based on the amount of work.
This structure is ideal if you collaborate with a freelancer on ongoing work, such as managing your email list or sending regular email campaigns.
- Content creation costs: Freelancers may charge separately for creating content, such as email copy, graphics, email subject lines, and multimedia elements. These costs can range from $50 to $500, depending on the complexity and quality required.
- Hourly rates: Some freelancers charge by the hour, and rates can vary widely based on their expertise, experience, and location. Expect to pay anywhere from $10 to $200 per hour, as shown below.
Despite the flexibility freelancer services offer, they have their limitations. Here’s a couple:
- Availability: Freelancers often work with many clients. This means they may not always be readily available to work with you when needed, which can disrupt your email marketing schedule.
- Limited experience and expertise: Most freelancers don’t provide comprehensive services. Therefore, you might need to hire multiple freelancers to cover all your email marketing needs.
- Lack of commitment: Freelancers love flexibility, which is why most work on a project-to-project basis. This means they will not provide the long-term commitment and continuity that an in-house team or agency can offer.
To effectively work with freelancers for your email marketing, ensure you carefully vet them. Review their online portfolio and check their references to ensure they meet your standards.
Hiring freelancers from apps like Upwork or Fiverr makes this easy since you can quickly access the freelancer’s profile with these critical details. Check out this email marketing freelancer’s profile on Fiverr, for example.
To protect both parties and provide clarity, communicate your expectations, timelines, and budget upfront to ensure a smooth working relationship. You achieve this by ensuring both parties sign formal agreements outlining the scope of work, payment terms, deadlines, and deliverables.
Besides that, ensure you provide detailed briefs and continuous feedback.
2. Email marketing agency
Hiring an email marketing agency provides access to a team of experts who can manage the different aspects of your campaigns.
As a result, it’s more costly than freelancer email marketing services. Email marketing agency pricing plans often range between $2,500 to $10,000+ monthly.
But while email marketing agency pricing is higher than freelancers’, it comes with significant advantages in terms of expertise and comprehensive services. This makes it ideal for companies with large email lists and a larger marketing budget.
Different agencies use different pricing strategies. We will categorize these into two:
A) Costing by method
Some email marketing agencies will charge clients based on different work models, including:
By project
Agencies may offer fixed-price projects for specific tasks or campaigns. For instance, you can hire an agency to design and send a series of promotional emails.
This pricing model is ideal for businesses with well-defined needs and goals.
The prices can range from $1,000 to $10,000+ based on the project’s complexity.
By hour
Hourly rates allow businesses to pay for the exact amount of time the agency spends on their email campaigns. This model’s flexibility and affordability is ideal for short-term or smaller projects.
Email marketing agencies’ hourly rates typically range from $15 to $300 per hour, depending on the agency’s expertise and location.
By revenue share
Some agencies may work on a performance-based model, taking a percentage of the revenue generated from the campaigns they manage.
This model aligns the agency’s incentives with the client’s success, which ensures both parties win. As a result, it is ideal for performance-based projects where the agency is responsible for driving sales or conversions through email marketing.
Of course, the sharing percentage will vary depending on the industry, campaign complexity, and expected outcome.
By hybrid model
The hybrid model requires businesses to pay a combination of fixed fees and performance-based incentives. Simply put, there is a base fixed payment, and then the agency will also get additional bonuses for achieving specific goals.
For instance, you can pay the agency a fixed monthly fee of $2,000 plus a commission of 5% of all the annual revenue generated from the campaigns they manage.
This model balances predictability with performance motivation, making it ideal for businesses seeking results-oriented email marketing services.
By retainer model
Businesses can also choose to have an agency on retainer. The agency will charge a fixed monthly retainer fee for ongoing email marketing services.
The retainer model provides consistent support and allows businesses to build a long-term partnership with their agency of choice.
Retainer fees can range from $1,000 to $10,000+ per month, depending on the level of service, business size, and the agency’s reputation.
B) Costing by services
The other alternative is hiring an email marketing agency based on the services provided. This approach allows clients to pay for a specific email marketing service instead of a whole package.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of the primary services offered and their associated costs:
Content creation services
Engaging and compelling content is crucial for the success of any email marketing campaign.
You can use an agency to help you create this compelling content, whether it’s developing email copy, designing templates, creating graphics, crafting subject lines, or producing multimedia elements for your emails.
Expect to pay anything from $500 per month for content creation services. This will vary based on the complexity of the content you need to design or word count.
Strategic services
You can also hire an email marketing agency to develop strategies that will align with your broader business goals.
Some of these strategic services offered by email agencies include audience segmentation, drip or email workflows, campaign planning, market analysis, and campaign scheduling.
Email marketing agencies charge around $75–$275 per hour or $900+ for strategic services.
Analytics services
Analyzing email campaign performance shows you what works best, helping you make data-driven decisions.
Some key analytics services email agencies provide include campaign monitoring, data visualization, custom reporting, and business outcomes predictions.
The cost of an email marketing agency analytics audit will often come to $750+.
Technical and platform services
Managing the technical aspects of email marketing ensures campaigns are delivered efficiently and effectively through great technologies, tools, or platforms.
Some of the technical and platform services email marketing agencies provide include setting up and managing email platforms, technology optimization, email deliverability, and compliance.
Email marketing agencies typically offer technical services at $95–$300 per hour.
3. In-house email marketing platform
If you have all the resources required to handle your email marketing needs, then you can use an in-house email marketing platform instead of hiring freelancers or an agency.
An in-house platform allows businesses to design, send, and analyze email campaigns internally. Let’s explore the benefits, cons, and costs of using an in-house email marketing platform:
The key benefits of using an in-house email marketing software include:
- Complete control: You will have full control over your email marketing efforts, from the design to the content and even the timing of your email campaigns, which ensures your emails resonate with their target audience.
- Cost efficiency: While the initial setup cost may be high, using an in-house platform will reduce the long-term cost of email advertising associated with hiring external agencies or subscribing to third-party services.
- Seamless integration: In-house platforms can be integrated with other internal systems, such as CRM and e-commerce platforms, allowing for more cohesive and streamlined marketing efforts.
- Real-time analytics and insights: In-house email software provides real-time access to analytics and performance data, which allow you to quickly adjust and optimize your email marketing efforts.
- Scalability: A good email marketing platform is built to scale with your business. It will allow you to easily manage larger contact lists, automate complex workflows, and integrate with other marketing tools as your email marketing needs evolve.
Here are some of the cons of using an in-house email service provider:
- High initial investment: Implementing an in-house email marketing software can be expensive at first since it’ll require substantial investments in software, hardware, and possibly new personnel or employee training.
- Ongoing maintenance: Maintaining and updating the platform requires ongoing technical support and resources, which can easily burden smaller businesses with limited budgets.
The cost of sending an email marketing campaign with in-house email marketing software will vary based on the platform, the size of the contact list, and the number of emails sent.
Luckily there is a wide range of email marketing software in the market, which means you will find one that matches your email marketing needs and budget. Let’s take a look at one such software in the next section.
Make GetResponse Max your in-house email marketing software
GetResponse Max is an excellent example of a comprehensive in-house email marketing software.
This premium software offers a suite of advanced features tailored to meet the needs of businesses looking to manage their email marketing internally. Some of the key ones include:
- Advanced automation: You can create complex, multi-step automation workflows to engage and convert your audience with minimal intervention from you.
- Analytics and reporting: We offer detailed performance metrics and insights to help you optimize your campaigns. This will also allow you to create highly personalized email content based on user behavior and preferences.
- Integration capabilities: The platform supports seamless integration with customer relationship management software (CRM), eCommerce solutions, and other business systems. This allows you to automate some campaigns like cart-abandoment emails as well as create personalized campaigns using existing customer data for optimal conversions.
- Priority support: You will enjoy 24/7 assistance from a dedicated customer experience manager via phone, email, live chat, and Slack.
- Unlimited users: GetResponse Max is designed to support an unlimited email volume, number of users, and roles, which makes it easy to handle growing contact lists and email marketing needs.
The GetResponse Max email marketing package pricing starts from $1099 per month.
Pricing considerations of email marketing platforms
Several factors influence the cost of email marketing platforms. Understanding these considerations will help you choose the right platform for your needs.
1. Quality and size of current email list
Most platforms operate on tiered pricing models, where the cost increases with the number of subscribers or contacts.
For example, a platform may charge a flat rate for up to 1,000 subscribers, but as the list grows, the price of the email marketing software solution will rise significantly.
A list of 10,000 subscribers will typically incur a higher monthly fee than a list of 1,000. Some platforms’ email marketing package prices can even reach several hundred dollars per month or more for a list with 10,000+ email addresses.
The quality of your email list is important here. High-quality lists consist of engaged, active subscribers who willingly opt-in and are interested in your content or offerings. These subscribers are more likely to open emails or convert into customers, leading to higher campaign effectiveness and better return on investment (ROI).
With engaged subscribers, you will lower the need for higher-tier features or additional marketing efforts. This allows you to leverage lower-cost marketing plans or avoid extra spending on re-engagement campaigns, reducing your overall monthly email marketing cost.
So, manage the size and quality of your email list to optimize your email marketing budgets and achieve better results from your campaigns.
You can do that by regularly cleaning your list to remove inactive subscribers, using an email verification service, and segmenting the list to tailor content to different audience segments.
2. Types and varieties of email design & templates
Platforms offering advanced customization options or professional design services are more likely to charge more. The same goes for custom email templates tailored to brand guidelines and specific campaign needs. This is because creating custom designs can be time-consuming. It also requires substantial investment in professional designers’ expertise.
However, this is often a price you don’t have to incur. You can opt to use pre-designed templates, whose price is usually included in the platform’s subscription fee. Despite their customization limitations, these email templates are a cost-effective and quick solution.
Our platform offers a template library with hundreds of free options for different purposes, such as email newsletters, promotional emails, event invitations, and more.
This variety guarantees you will always find a template that best fits your campaign objectives.
3. Frequency of email campaigns
Sending emails frequently, say, daily or multiple times a week, can also affect your email marketing costs. This is a big issue for platforms that charge based on the number of emails sent, meaning higher frequency leads to higher expenses.
For instance, Brevo’s email marketing package prices include a certain number of monthly emails. Users must upgrade their plan to exceed that monthly email volume limit.
This is unlike our platform, where only the free plan has a limit on the number of emails you can send per month.
To maximize engagement and manage your email marketing costs effectively (when using a platform with monthly sends limits), ensure you find the right balance in your email frequency.
One way to achieve this is by segmenting your email list. Email segmentation allows you to tailor the frequency based on subscriber preferences and behaviors.
For example, your highly engaged subscribers will receive more frequent updates, while less engaged ones will get fewer emails.
4. Platform support features
Different price tiers will receive varying levels of support from email service providers. There are two main categories of support:
- Basic support: This option typically includes email or live chat support during business hours. It is offered to clients paying the standard email marketing pricing.
- Premium support: The priority support option provides dedicated account managers that offer priority response on different channels or 24/7 availability. The feature is offered to clients paying the custom price or at an additional cost for those paying the standard email marketing cost per month.
If you are a small business that can’t afford to pay for premium support or custom email marketing services prices, you can use the additional resources to fill any knowledge gaps.
Most email marketing platforms offer knowledge bases, FAQs, and community forums where users can find answers to common questions and issues.
5. Plan features
The features offered under each email marketing platform plan also impact the overall price.
Entry-level plans are obviously cheaper because they offer basic functionalities like customizable templates, a drag-and-drop email editor, basic email list management, and email scheduling.
These are enough for small businesses or beginners. However, big companies will require more advanced features that help them optimize campaigns for better engagement and results.
Higher-tier plans offer more sophisticated functionalities. These include automation, abandoned cart reminders, enhanced personalization options, advanced segmentation, SMS marketing, comprehensive analytics and reporting tools, and A/B testing capabilities.
Before committing to any paid plan, take advantage of the 30-day trial period most email service providers offer. This will help you find the perfect plan for your business.
GetResponse offers a great trial period that allows you to test our premium features without providing credit card details, so you never have to worry about unexpected charges.
Email marketing in 2024 – Is it worth it?
Even with the continued rise of social media marketing, influencer marketing, and other newer digital marketing channels, email marketing is still undoubtedly worth it in 2024. Here’s why.
One is that it’s cost-effective. Email provides substantial value for relatively low costs. You can even start with one of the free price plans most email marketing providers offer.
Two, unlike a marketing channel like social media marketing, where the algorithms of different social media platforms control the visibility of your content, emails go straight to the recipient’s inbox. Therefore, your target audience is more likely to get your content.
Three, features like personalization, segmentation, and automation ensure your target audience receives relevant communication at the right time. This will boost your email open rates and click-through rates, increasing engagement and conversions.
Looking to start your email marketing journey? Here are some of the best email marketing practices you should follow for great results.
Conclusion
There is no one-size-fits-all email campaign cost or a fixed cost per email. As we’ve discussed, your email marketing cost will range from $10 per hour to $10000+ per month, depending on whether you outsource to freelancers or an email marketing agency.
You can also decide to DIY it and use an in-house email marketing software, which has its own email cost. For instance, our platform’s pricing ranges from as low as $19 to $1099 per month.
Whatever decision you make, ensure that your chosen email marketing platform aligns with your budget, email marketing objectives, and overall business needs.