e_Marketing

Is Email marketing a "cost effective" way to promote your business?

The short answer is "Yes". First because it doesn't cost much when compared to other methods of advertising.

And second, it is effective when done correctly.

Let's examine the COST factor a bit more closely.

To most business people the cost advantages of Email advertising are fairly obvious. Assuming you have an internet connection you can send emails for virtually no cost at all.

But that doesn't make it "free".

It doesn't just happen without expending some effort and resources. It does take time and energy. Once you become serious about it, and as your list starts to grow you will want to do more sophisticated campaigns that will cost a bit of money.

But compared to the alternatives it is still ridiculously cheap.

Consider an example...

A few days ago I received an advertising piece in the mail from a local electrical services company. It was a standard 4 page format (11x17), printed in full colour. Since the business owner did a mass unaddressed mailing to my community I assume at least a few thousand of these were sent out.

I would estimate the cost of this piece at somewhere between $2000 and $3000 just for printing and distribution. Add in another $1000 for writing and graphic design and you're looking at anywhere from between $3000 and $4000 for one advertising mailer to (let's say) 10,000 homes. That's between $.30 and $.40 each. If it was sent to just 5,000 homes the cost would be between $.60 and $.80 each.

Now remember, these are unaddressed mailers -- often referred to as junk mail. Put addresses on them and the cost could double because of the much higher postal rate.

That means that sending 5,000 addressed mailers via the postal service would likely cost more than $1 each.

What about email?

Now how much would it cost to send an email message to 5000 addresses? Using our LinkMailPro pricing it would be less than $500. In fact you could do at least two different Email messages to 5000 addresses for that price.

That is less than 1/10 - just 10% - of the cost of a traditional mailer.

Sounds like a pretty attractive proposition. And we haven't even mentioned some of the other obvious advantages of Email advertising (that will come tomorrow.)

In tomorrow's post I'll look at the effectiveness of Email marketing compared to some of the alternatives.