Email Marketing on a Budget: Tips to Cut Costs

You’ve probably read a lot about the impressive results that email marketing brings to the table. To put it in numbers, we’re talking about an average return on investment (ROI) of $36 for each dollar spent.

But to be reading this article, you probably want to learn if its value outweighs the investment.

The answer is it depends.

Not all companies are created equal, nor are the email marketing strategies they use. Some brands pour a lot of resources and hours of work into their emails only to witness low performance. How can you ensure that this won’t happen to you? Keep reading.

The truth is that you can do email marketing on a budget and still get optimal results. However, for effective email marketing, you need to plan strategically: 

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 you can 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 first define your requirements.  

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, there are many affordable email marketing platforms, offering free or low-cost plans. Some marketers feel these tools come with limitations, but that’s far from true. Budget-conscious email marketing software helps you plan, create, and deliver your 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 email signature.

B. Features

Free or low-cost platforms may have some limitations when it comes to 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 gives you the option to send order confirmation and receipts automatically.

On the other hand, a landing page builder might not be necessary. By setting your priorities, you’ll be able to 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 considering the size of your list and the number of monthly emails, too.

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

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, and 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 in your team can design a compelling email.

So, look for an intuitive interface and easy-to-grasp options to segment your audience, create and automate emails, and track email performance.  

Tip: It’s important to see email tools in action. Ask for a free trial or demo to check their functionalities. Also, go through 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. Sending and tracking emails manually is time-consuming. That’s where email automation comes into play, freeing up time for more productive tasks like 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 dispatches personalized content according to user activity. This enhance 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 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 type of incentive to bring shoppers back to your site.

C. Birthday or anniversary emails

Send automated emails to recipients on their birthday or anniversary 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 useful content on your blog.

3. Keep your List Segmented and Healthy  

Email services ask you to pay for the number of subscribers and/or monthly email sends. Maintaining a segmented and clean email list will help you reduce email marketing costs. 

Group your contacts based on their characteristics, behaviors, and preferences to create targeted campaigns. 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 have to keep your email lists updated and sanitized, too. Sending emails to disengaged subscribers is translated into lost opportunities and waste of money. 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. But before 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. This tactic helps you lower unsubscribes and bounces, further 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 reason why email marketing doesn’t bring the expected ROI since generic messages won’t convince people to subscribe, engage, or convert.  

Put all your thought into crafting exciting, helpful, and relevant emails that cater to your readers’ interests. High-quality and personalized email content achieves a higher ROI. Plus, you’ll need to send fewer emails to achieve your goals. These are the best practices to create emails that urge subscribers to act: 

• Write engaging, short, and 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. Also, place them prominently so there’s no chance of missing them.

• 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 definitely leverage AI generators to create subject lines, copy, and even 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. And you can do so with a minimum investment in money, time, and effort.

This process involves taking existing content and tweaking it 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 how to organize 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. When recycling content from your blog or social media in your emails, you drive 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 interesting 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 

When doing email marketing on a budget, it’s important to measure your email campaign performance to ensure you have an acceptable ROI. 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 even sending times.

• Ask for your recipients’ opinions through dedicated surveys or polls. Focus on what they like and where they think you should improve in your email communication.

• Review your email performance against your predefined goals 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 a cost-effective email marketing platform, automating your emails, and maintaining a sanitized email list.

Also, you’ll need to craft compelling email content and repurpose existing content for your emails to broaden your reach. By adopting these practices, you can harness the full potential of email marketing without breaking the bank.  

But careful planning and strategic execution goes a long way. So, above all, affordable email marketing requires continuous adaptation and optimization.

Use your email marketing service to regularly measure key performance indicators to refine your email campaigns accordingly.

Our guide will serve as your checklist for spending your budget in the most productive way while creating valuable email content for your audience.

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