Email Marketing on a Budget: 6 Tips to Cut Costs

When done right, email marketing can bring impressive results to a business. To put it in numbers, email marketing has an average return on investment of $36 for each dollar spent.

But does the value outweigh the initial investment?

The quick answer is it depends.

Some email marketing strategies require a significant investment upfront, only to observe dismal results. On the flip side, other brands focus on low-cost email marketing efforts and still get optimal results.

With the right approach, you can maximize your efficiency even with a limited email marketing budget.

This resource dives into cost-cutting tactics when you’re email marketing on a budget.

Effective email marketing is anchored on strategic planning. For that you’ll have to answer several questions, like: 

• Will you send your emails on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis?
• Which emails best fit your unique goals?
• Are the people on your list really interested in what you have to say?

The answers to these questions will guide you in choosing the right tools and marketing tactics that save both money and time.

We’ll help you figure things out by analyzing how to maximize your email marketing ROI as a business with budget constraints.

6 Useful Tips For Budget-Friendly Email Marketing

1. Choose an Affordable Email Marketing Service 

The service that helps you create and send your emails is the cornerstone of your email marketing efforts. Before deciding on the most suitable one, you should define your requirements first.  

Think about how many emails you’ll send or how many recipients you have. What features do you need? Do you have a small team? Are your team members tech-savvy? And, most importantly, is there an email marketing service that offers everything you need at a reasonable price? 

Thankfully, many affordable email marketing platforms offer free or low-cost plans. Some marketers feel these tools have limitations, but that’s far from the truth.

Budget-conscious email marketing software helps you plan, create, and deliver emails without sacrificing campaign performance and optimization options.  

However, there are factors to consider. Here’s what you should be looking for to make the most of email marketing on a budget: 

A. Built-in email templates

Ready-made templates help you design beautiful emails without the need to learn how to code or hire a dedicated professional. These templates should be customizable so you can tweak their design to your needs and branding.

For example, change the fonts or colors, incorporate visual elements, and add your logo and create email signature.

B. Features

Free or affordable emailing platforms may have some limitations regarding functionality.

Start by creating a list of must-have and nice-to-have features. For instance, if you own an online store, you’ll need a platform that allows you to send order confirmations and receipts automatically.

On the other hand, a landing page builder might not be necessary. By setting your priorities, you can pick a tool that matches your requirements and pay just for the features you need. 

C. Pricing structure

Many email tools adjust their pricing options based on the features offered. But most of them will charge you based on the size of your list and the number of monthly emails you will potentially send out.

Check each platform’s pricing model and determine what best suits your needs. Look at the fine print or read reviews to avoid additional charges if you exceed the number of contacts or emails sent.

If you send emails occasionally, consider options that charge using a credit system. That way, you have complete control over your budget by paying only when you send. 

D. Ease of use

You don’t need to hire experts to get the most out of your email marketing. Specialized tools with advanced features are useful for everyone, even those lacking technical freelance skills can use them.

For instance, if your email service offers email and automation builders with drag-and-drop functionalities and pre-made templates, everyone on your team can design compelling emails.

So, look for an intuitive interface and easy-to-grasp options for segmenting your audience, creating and automating emails, and tracking email performance.  

Tip: It’s essential to see email tools in action. Ask for a free trial or demo to check their functionalities. Also, review customer reviews to evaluate whether the tool addressed other users’ pain points.

2. Automate Where You Can  

Time is money. And that’s true in email marketing, too.

Email automation is a non-negotiable for any cheap email marketing campaign. Sending and tracking emails manually is time-consuming and budget-depleting.

By automating emails, you free up time for more productive tasks, such as writing outstanding copy or detecting areas for improvement in your strategy.

Here is what you can achieve with email automation:

Email marketing services have incorporated automation options to remove the burden of manual work.

You can access built-in, professionally designed automated workflows for every business scenario and customize them to match your recipients’ needs and likes.

Then, all it takes is setting them to go out after a specific time interval using various rules. Basically, your emails run on autopilot and dispatch personalized content according to user activity, enhancing the subscriber experience. 

Let’s go through some of the most popular use cases of email marketing automation and a few examples:

A. Welcome emails

Create welcome emails to say thank you to new subscribers and introduce your brand, its mission, and its offerings. Consider adding a first-time discount to prompt purchases.

B. Abandoned cart campaigns

Use an automated series to remind visitors of the items left in their cart. Such an email series helps you recover lost sales, so use some form of incentive to bring shoppers back to your site.

C. Birthday or anniversary emails

Send automated emails to recipients on their birthdays or anniversaries with your brand. Perhaps you can add an exclusive discount or freebie as a token of appreciation.

D. Re-engagement campaigns

Set up re-engagement campaigns to reignite inactive subscribers’ interest. List the benefits of joining your list and trusting your products by adding social proof elements like testimonials and offering valuable content.

E. Automated follow-ups

Automate emails to follow up with users after specific actions like webinar registrations, purchases, or content downloads. Leverage the occasion to promote relevant products or services or display helpful content on your blog.

3. Keep your List Segmented and Healthy  

Email services charge for the number of subscribers and/or monthly email sends. Maintaining a segmented and clean email list will help you create targeted campaigns and, by extension, reduce email marketing costs. 

Group your contacts based on their characteristics, behaviors, and preferences. That way, you can deliver personalized offers and content that resonate with each group, boosting conversions and customer satisfaction while optimizing resource allocation. 

But to maintain effectiveness, you’ll also have to keep your email lists updated and sanitized.

Sending emails to disengaged subscribers often translates to wasted resources. On the contrary, healthy email lists allow you to deliver your emails to the right inboxes.  

What should you do to clean up your list?

Every six months. Remove invalid, duplicate, and inactive contacts so your emails reach interested recipients.

Before completely removing them, schedule a re-engagement campaign to give them a last chance to engage with your content. In case it doesn’t work, it’s time to let go. 

Implementing strong email verification processes can help maintain an engaged and accurate contact list, ultimately enhancing the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.

Proper list cleaning lets you focus your efforts on engaged subscribers, ensuring you’re not charged for contacts who don’t bring a return on investment. In addition to supporting your budget-friendly email marketing campaign, this helps you lower unsubscribe and bounce rates, improving your sender reputation with email clients:

4. Focus on Creating Quality Email Content 

Brands often overlook the importance of creating quality email content, but subscribers nowadays don’t tolerate generic messages.

In fact, creating non-targeted emails might be a key factor ballooning the cost of email marketing. Generic messages won’t convince people to subscribe, engage, or convert, which is also why email marketing doesn’t bring the expected ROI.  

Put all your thought into crafting exciting, helpful, and relevant emails that cater to your readers’ interests. High-quality and personalized email content boosts your email marketing efficiency since you’ll have to send fewer emails to achieve your goals and get your desired ROI.

These are the best practices to create emails that urge subscribers to act: 

• Write engaging, short, personalized email subject lines that make subscribers feel someone wrote them just for them. 
• Use clear CTAs to specify what you want subscribers to do once they read your email. Place them prominently so they are impossible to miss.
• Write in a natural and conversational language so subscribers relate to your message and connect with your brand on a deeper level. 

To make this happen, it’s better to rely on human writers. While you can leverage AI generators to create subject lines, copy, and visuals, it’s far easier for flesh-and-blood professionals to understand your value proposition and how to promote it.

Also, a creative human writer grasps your customers’ needs better. This is key to producing optimized copy that motivates readers to click through your email and on your CTA.

5. Repurpose Content for Email Marketing 

Repurposing content for your emails is a brilliant technique that allows you to kill two birds with one stone. It requires a minimal investment in money, time, and effort—perfect if you’re running out on your email marketing budget.

This process involves tweaking existing content to create helpful and compelling email material. Such content usually includes blog posts, social media posts, YouTube videos, or podcast episodes. 

For example, you may have a blog post on organizing a home office. You can turn it into valuable newsletter content, offering subscribers actionable organization tips to transform their home office. You can also choose your most engaging LinkedIn posts to create a detailed guide on solving a common pain point in your niche.  

Apart from saving time and workload, content repurposing allows you to reach and engage a wider audience. Recycling content from your blog or social media in your emails drives traffic back to these channels.

Just make sure you don’t give everything away in your email. Tease them with enough details to direct them to the original source and let them further engage with your brand there.

Take a look at this newsletter sample from Charity Water, where they teased the content enough to be enjoyable before presenting the CTA to read the full content:

This tactic enhances consistent branding across multiple platforms, too. When you use emails to promote content from different channels, your audience will start recognizing your brand—as long as you stay consistent with your identity.   

Before repurposing content, always consider if it resonates with your subscribers.

Do they share the same aspirations and needs as the audience on your blog or social media? Is the content still relevant? Have there been any changes in the industry or the socioeconomic circumstances since the first publication?

Answering these questions will help you deliver timely and relevant content that addresses your readers’ challenges. 

6. Track What Works 

Measuring your performance is crucial to ensure you get the targeted ROI, especially in low-cost email marketing campaigns. Some of the most essential indicators to keep track of include:

Some strategies will work, while others won’t have the expected results. Let’s go through some tips to distinguish between the two and stick to the first category: 

• Check the reports from your email marketing service to monitor your subscribers’ behavior and analyze their engagement.
• Use A/B testing to experiment with different email versions and decide on the best-performing subject lines, copy, visuals, CTAs, or sending times.
• Ask for your recipients’ opinions through dedicated surveys or polls. Focus on what they like and where they think you should improve your email communication.
• Review your email performance against your predefined goals or industry standards to identify potential bottlenecks in your strategy. 

By regularly tracking your results, you can refine your email marketing campaigns and invest in effective resource planning for future efforts. 

Reduce Email Costs, Increase Subscriber Engagement

Email marketing on a budget involves investing in an affordable email marketing service, automating your email workflow, and maintaining an engaged email list.

Also, you’ll need to craft compelling email content and repurpose existing content. Adopting these practices can help you cut costs while maximizing the impact of your budget-conscious email marketing campaign.

It’s all about adaptation and optimization. Use your email marketing platform to regularly measure key performance indicators and refine your approach accordingly.

Use our guide as your checklist to ensure you spend your email marketing budget efficiently and effectively.

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