Exactly 50 years ago, the very first email was sent. Since then, it has completely changed the marketing landscape. Companies began to utilize this latest technology to promote their business and gain brand recognition.
Today, email marketing is a $7.5 billion industry worldwide. According to statistics, for every $1 spent on email marketing, businesses usually get $36 in return. The ROI is very attractive for those just starting their business venture.
There are more email users than all of other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter combined. The potential reach with the help of email marketing is beyond imagination.
Business owners should not underestimate the benefits they can reap with email marketing. The costs vary greatly depending on if you do the email marketing by yourself or through an agency. In this article, we will carefully dissect each aspect of email marketing to explain everything you will need to know to get started.
The Cost of E-mail Marketing Explained
If you do it by yourself without delegating any part to an agency, it could cost from $0 to approximately $1000 per month.
Costs can come in the form of email marketing tools, courses, ads, offers and giveaways, hiring someone to write copy, or even professionally design a newsletter.
Free and paid tools
There are several free email marketing platforms that allow users to create campaigns for free with limited features. For starting entrepreneurs, the free features suffice. If not, you can upgrade it based on your needs. The varying packages can cost up to $150 per month.
Check out these free email marketing tools to get started:
Email marketing courses
Then, you may join some email marketing courses to keep yourself up to date with the face-paced marketing world and the changes in user behaviors. Not only do these courses give you an idea of how to construct a performing and promising email marketing campaign, but they also give you insights on how growing businesses strategize their marketing plans based on the actual needs.
A few courses to check out are:
- HubSpot Academy: Email Marketing
- Udemy: Email and Affiliate Marketing Mastermind
- ClickMinded: Email Marketing
Growing your list
To supplement it, you may spend money on growing your email list, like paying for ads and creating giveaways on your website to get more people to signup. The costs of these giveaways and freebies are well-controlled by the owners but would need to be planned out to make sure it garners the desired results.
Outsourcing to agencies or freelancers
On the other hand, if you don’t want to handle everything, you can always outsource it to an agency or a freelance marketer to lead your email marketing campaigns. The cost would be around $400 to $1200 per month.
Email marketing agencies are professionals and know the algorithm of various platforms. They have years of experience in this field. They often have discount codes for various tools. Different team members are in charge of different parts of the campaign. This delegation ensures everyone is utilizing their expertise.
Some marketing agencies make special deals for entrepreneurs to charge the starting price at a discount but demand a share of profits from the purchases made by the links in the email campaigns.
While the cost of outsourcing the email marketing campaign can be high, the results are likely more instant.
Is Email Marketing Suitable for Every Business?
Yes.
In this day and age, thanks to globalization, every business is taking advantage of the online space to promote their services. The traditional ways of marketing like TV and radio promotion, gas station ads, and sponsoring sporting events can no longer live up to their glorious past. The results of these marketing methods are diminishing.
On the contrary, the influence of email marketing has been on the rise. Every day, billions of email campaigns are sent. Email marketing reaches all your contacts regardless of the geographical location.
Users are more attentive to email marketing than social media marketing. Emails are sent to the user’s inbox and potential customers can save the link to make a purchase later. It has a more long-lasting effect than social media marketing.
In addition, companies that use email marketing tend to have better customer relationships. Email campaigns nurture trust and establish a sense of brand loyalty. Customers are more willing to buy from brands they are familiar with.
No matter the industry you are in, email marketing is the fastest way to get to your clients. There is no business too small. Every industry has its potential. Whether you are in the catering business or the car racing field, email marketing can expand your reach tenfold.
What Are the Advantages of Email Marketing?
Here’s why everyone should be using email marketing.
Track user behavior
For businesses, email marketing is a reliable way to track user behavior. When an email is opened, clicked, or skipped, the digital trace is detected and sent back to the sender for analysis. Business owners can review the strategy accordingly.
Other means of marketing, like social media marketing, cannot track each user’s behavior as accurately. The results of a social media campaign depend on a lot of variables that are out of control for businesses. Email marketing offers a stable return with better control.
Keep your audience updated
Also, an email marketing campaign keeps the audience updated on the latest news and trends of the company. For example, if you run a fashion company, you can invite your audience to the upcoming fashion show, your next collection reveal, and seasonal discounts in stores. It is an effective way to communicate with your existing clients.
Email marketing is also seen as a professional way of communication. Companies will rarely rely on other channels like WhatsApp, Facebook, or Instagram to keep a list of contacts or reach out to customers. Those channels are more for leisure and cannot be counted as official channels.
Build trust
Businesses can build up trust through email marketing. A successful email marketing campaign draws traffic to the website up tremendously. The contacts on your list trust your brand and therefore will be willing to check out the newest products you have.
Keep costs low
Most importantly, the cost of email marketing is significantly lower than social media marketing or other types of marketing, whether you do it by yourself or outsource it to an agency. This is highly beneficial and attractive for new business owners who do not have much capital to spend on marketing.
The monetary cost of email marketing can be zero as long as you do everything by yourself. It does not require fancy visuals or stunning animation. Content is key. Whereas for social media, you need to capture the audience’s attention with dramatic graphics and eye-catching fonts. The algorithm changes for social media but for email marketing, it’s relatively stable.
There are so many benefits to using email marketing. The potential yield is massive compared to the price. Every industry is competitive. To stay on top of the competition, you will need to grow your email list to get to as many people as possible.
How to Grow Your Email List?
Companies get contacts through various means. For each one of them, you will have to offer an incentive for people to sign up. There has to be a reason why someone who does not know about your business would want to be a part of your community.
Opt-in
The most direct one is to ask people to sign up to get the newsletter and discounts on the front page of your website. If a user is interested after checking out your site, then he will sign up to be on your email list.
Incentives and lead magnets
Another common way to grow your email list is to through giveaways and freebies. If you are selling handcrafts, you may consider hosting a small online Masterclass on craftmanship. Get people to sign up and get their email addresses.
Giveaways usually get a lot of attention as people are getting rewarded for signing up. This also guarantees you generate sales leads because those who sign up usually have an interest in your business.
Networking
Other ways to grow your email list include networking. LinkedIn and your respective networking channels suitable for your niche are fantastic for networking and growing your email list. Online networking events can attract thousands of attendees. There are plenty of opportunities to grow your email list.
Should You Handle the Email Marketing by Yourself or Delegate it?
There are two sides to the story. At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong.
Do it yourself
By handling everything yourself, a business owner can ensure everything is up to standards and consistent with the brand value, tone, and vision. You create everything by yourself and have all the time in the world to perfect it before it goes live.
However, the trial and error process can be dreadful. Since email marketing is not your expertise, handling it by yourself means you will have to allocate more time to it. You may end up neglecting other ends of your business.
Delegate
Outsourcing it to an agency saves you time and allows you to focus on other aspects of your business. But you would risk losing your brand tone. After all, no one knows your brand as well as you do. Delegating the marketing part risks giving off a different image to your audience than you’d wish.
Email marketers focus on how to get the biggest noise from the crowd with minimal effort. That sometimes means twisting the tones and brand values so it is more eye-catching.
Some business owners are fine with that, but some are not cool with changing their brand image just to get attention. It reflects professionalism. The time you spend communicating back and forth with the email marketer may already be enough for you to take on the task by yourself.
Most marketing firms do not send reviews to clients before they publish to save time. That often creates conflicts if the campaign does not look as great as you envisioned.
It is a constant battle of whether to outsource this sensitive task to others. At different stages in your entrepreneurial path, you may feel differently. There is no set answer as it also depends on your budget and goals.
How to Come Up with an Email Marketing Plan?
After you have decided to go for email marketing, it’s time to come up with an email marketing plan. The main purpose of email marketing is to nurture your existing audience and get new signups. Eventually, you will turn them into paying clients.
Plan the content
A successful email marketing campaign should be informative, educational, and professional. Since the ultimate goal is to sell your products and services, you should always link them back to your company.
Let’s say you run a health supplement business. Your goal is to sell health supplements to seniors in the region. Do some marketing research on the most-searched topics in the region relating to health.
To keep things informative, you may want to send newsletters about a celebrity having heart failure and how it is common among seniors who lack exercise, etc. Then, you can swiftly talk about how your products help by increasing heart function and pushing for a healthier body.
What you include in your email campaigns should always be relevant to the work you are doing. Never send out email campaigns that cannot be linked back to your products or services.
Establish a brand tone
Do you want to use the chill vibe or the serious tone in communicating with your potential clients? It all depends on your brand image and varies from company to company. Companies catering to the younger generation may find including gifs and slang highly effective in getting the attention of that group while companies catering to working professionals will surely find that strategy futile as it only gives out a low-class unprofessional vibe in the office settings.
Consider aesthetics
Choose your brand tone and color scheme carefully. You can explore different possibilities through trial and error. Once you are set on the brand tone you want, it’s time to make it consistent.
People should instantly recognize the email is sent from your business without having to look at the sender. This is called brand recognition. A top-notch company has a consistent voice that is easily recognizable by its audience.
Email marketing is a wonderful way to leave a good impression. People check emails regularly for discounts in shops and the newest collection.
You don’t need to create stunning graphics but still, you will need some graphics to complete the email campaigns. Emails with plain texts usually get ignored and go straight to the spam folder. Create simple graphics that convey the main message of the email if you are not skilled in this department.
Find the right headline
Keep your headline short and concise. Lengthy headlines usually get marked as spam. Do not use all capitals as that is a red flag for most email systems as well.
How to Manage Your Audience?
Finally, select your group of audience. A smart way to grow your email list is to categorize your audience by different groups. Assuming you have various products, it’s safe to say that not everyone on your list is interested in the same product. Therefore, you should systematically categorize them.
Create separate lists for those who are showing interest but have never shopped, those who have made several purchases, and those who are recurring clients. That way, you can build email campaigns specifically for each group of audience.
For the newcomers, since they have never made a purchase and are probably doubtful of the quality, give them a discount in the email and positive customer reviews to persuade them. For those who have made purchases before, continue to nurture them. Send them updates on how the company is doing and what latest products are in store.
Ask for customer reviews as well to make the emails more interactive. Use the tag feature to better organize your audience list. With the tag feature, you can separate clients however you want. Perhaps you want to know how many clients are coming from Facebook, referrals, or the giveaway. Then the tag feature allows you to sort that out in your existing list without changing the position of your list or removing anyone from the group.
Managing your audience is an important step in perfecting your email marketing strategy. When you send out an email campaign, you can choose the receiving group. This also gives you an idea of how engaging the respective group is and thus, you can adjust your email marketing plan accordingly.
How to Utilize Marketing Analytics?
Every premium email marketing tool would come with marketing analytics to review the results of each campaign and what can be done for better results.
Always review the statistics after each campaign so you know what is working and what is not. The analytics include the click-through rate, open rate, purchase rate, age group, gender ratio, etc. These statistics give hints as to who is the most interested in your products. You can strategize your marketing plan to sell to your most interested audience.
If your click-through rate is low, try switching to a different color scheme or tone. Sometimes, your audience may skip an email because the content does not resonate with them. With the analytics, you can try several styles until you find one that works well.
Furthermore, email marketing analytics gives a perspective of how each individual is interested in your products. It keeps track of the click-through rate of each individual. When someone opens your email campaigns three times in a row, he is likely considering buying something.
In that case, all you need is to give those people a gentle push. You can set email automation that sends those users an email once they open more than three emails. In the email series, you can include various limited offers to make the products look more tempting.
These are only possible with marketing analytics. That’s why you should not miss this life-changing feature that is essential to your email marketing. As email marketing experts often put it, your journey has only started after you have got back your first analytic report.
Where to Get Leads for Email Marketing?
To have a comprehensive email list, you need quality contacts. Why struggle to build a list when you can purchase one? Lead-generating firms provide a large database for clients to buy sales leads in their respective industries.
Among the sea of choices, LimeLeads offers premium leads at the best competitive prices. Hundreds of companies have enjoyed unlimited searches in our database. We update our data vault every 90 days to ensure the freshness of each lead.
We only source from primary channels for maximum accuracy. No secondary information is included in our system. That’s how we have been keeping our accuracy rate at 92%.
All the leads are carefully sorted by geographical location, employee size and title, tech spec, annual revenue, and more. Companies can customize lead lists according to their needs. Each export comes with our real-time email verification to double-check each lead.
LimeLeads connects you with industry experts, clients, and potential investors. You are not bound by a rigid monthly payment method. Instead, you can pay for each month as you need. Cancel at any time if you no longer need the service. We offer great flexibility for growing businesses.
Firms often need new leads every season. That’s why LimeLeads does not want to tie you down with a payment plant. Come back when you are expanding your brand.
Our client satisfaction rate is 100% because we offer a full refund for any lead that performs below the industry average. You take zero risk with us. We take sole responsibility for the quality of our leads.
Enjoy our team feature and share results instantly with your teammates. Sign up now on LimeLeads to enjoy the multiple benefits and fully unlock the potential of your business.
Summary
Email marketing is an effective way to boost your reach and increase revenue. The monetary cost of an email campaign can be zero. Each industry can benefit significantly from email marketing. It has surpassed other traditional channels in bringing in new income streams.
Having premium contacts is what makes your email campaigns successful. To get instant access to quality leads, join LimeLeads now to explore the thousands of leads in your industry. Get in touch with your next million-dollar investment opportunity.
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