At this point in the digital revolution, you may have heard that you can’t afford not to invest in email marketing. B2B marketers claim that email is three times more effective than social media marketing and returns $38 for every $1 invested.
But let’s face facts: you still have to be able to afford the investment to start earning those kinds of results.
Big, robust marketing automation platforms like Pardot, Marketo, and HubSpot can run $10,000 or more per year, depending on how many contacts you have in your system. To put this into perspective, $10k will roughly allow you to have 10,000 contacts. If you have 30k, 40k, 100k contacts – do the math, it’s nuts.
Let’s consider a simpler email marketing with built-in automation for the smaller budgets (we’re talking anything less than 10,000 contacts). Yes, it does exist, and yes, even small businesses with small budgets can harness its power.
MailChimp: A Powerful, Inexpensive Email Service Provider
MailChimp is arguably the most popular email marketing solutions for small businesses, namely because its basic yet powerful features are free to use.
With MailChimp, you can manage your email database and marketing in a single platform.
Their user interface is super intuitive. Just follow the prompts and use their drag-and-drop editor to create stunning emails that look professional. There’s no coding required and no guesswork on how your emails will look once you send them. They even let you send test campaigns to yourself to ensure flawless delivery.
If you want to level up your email marketing, MailChimp offers several paid features, such as marketing automation, optimizing your send times, and advanced segmentation. These features cost between $10-$199 per month, depending on the specific features and level of customer support you need.
The best practice is to take advantage of their free email marketing and automation platform to see how it all works.
Maximize Every Email with a Professional’s Touch
Email marketing is a marketing powerhouse you don’t want to ignore. Over 80% of companies use email marketing, compared to just 67% that use social media. It’s effective and inexpensive, giving you one of the best ways to spend your marketing budget and get a real ROI.
We get it—not many companies have extra staff to conjure up interesting and relevant email content, organize lists, send out newsletters, and track conversions. That’s why you should hire someone who does.
When you hire a marketing agency, their team can help you get the best results for your email marketing. Agencies have invested the time and energy to learn all the ins and outs of Email Marketing so you don’t have to. They will put their expertise to work for you to give you the best possible results.
You save time, make money, and get all the benefits of email marketing without having to do it all yourself. In fact, your total cost for MailChimp could be anywhere from free to just $9/month. Not too shabby considering email marketing has more than twice the ROI compared to any other digital channel.
Nine bucks, that’s cheap, right? But what about the agency fee? Aha!
Email Marketing, like social media, is super affordable, but time is money. If you do not have the time then you will spend money on a marketing agency to run your email marketing for you. What does that cost? Depends. But here’s an estimate for a small business sending two emails per month from MailChimp: $1k – $2k monthly. Let’s call that an investment rather than a cost.