Email Marketing On a Budget

Email Marketing On a BudgetWithout a doubt, email marketing is one of the most effective marketing techniques out there today.  It allows business owners to reach a larger audience than most advertising mediums and provides business owners with numerous benefits including the ability to gather data, communicate quickly with customers, and promote new products and services with ease.  However, many entrepreneurs – especially those just starting out – are often turned off by the potential cost of an email marketing campaign.  But fret not; there are a number of ways to ensure you can have an effective, affordable email marketing campaign.  If you’re looking to start an email marketing campaign on a budget, consider the following areas where you can save a lot of money.

Emailing Service

The foundation of email marketing is the emailing service.  While it would be great if we could send thousands of emails through Gmail or Hotmail, for many reasons it simply doesn’t work.  Fortunately, there are a number of low cost emailing service providers out there with great deliverability and the opportunity to increase your payments as your subscription base grows.  This is a great way to get started as by the time your list grows, you should be seeing a good return on your emailing campaign.

Sales Copy

Unless you’re already a phenomenal sales copy writer, this is one area you won’t want to skimp on.  The sales copy is your bread and butter in ensuring your email marketing campaign is a success.  By hiring a professional sales copy writer you’ll increase your conversion rate by a large margin which will more than cover the cost.  However, as this article is on email marketing on a budget, there are other avenues to take.  The most obvious is improving your own writing skills.  Do so by looking at the sales copy of some of the top marketers in your niche and attempt to replicate it.  When it comes to writing skills, practice makes perfect.

Email Templates

Another area you may need to spend some money on is your email template.  Unless you have great design skills this may involve hiring a designer.  Fortunately there are often great designers available at very affordable prices on many of the top freelance websites such as Elance.  The great benefit of email templates is that once you have it, you won’t need another one unless you start a more specific email campaign (e.g. a holiday season campaign).  Another option is to use a free template.  Many emailing services provide great templates that are easily customizable to your brand.  Whichever, method you choose to take, be sure to keep it consistent.

As can be seen from the above, email marketing doesn’t have to be expensive.  Emailing services often provide a wide-range of packages that grow as you do and with an investment in great sales copy, your emailing campaign should provide you with a great return on investment.  Other costs such as email templates and banners are generally a one-time payment and can be reused throughout the life of your campaign.  Just remember – email marketing is very profitable and well worth the investment.