How much does email marketing cost?

You’re at the top of your game, producing the best work of your life–and yet, not enough people know about it. You need to embrace email marketing, and at a price that makes it easy for you to jump onboard.

As a creator, the ability to communicate with your readers on a regular basis is the key to growing your audience and scaling your business. Sending a newsletter isn’t just the perfect way to update readers about your latest successes - it can also be a key driver for expanding revenue.

Developing and maintaining an effective newsletter inevitably comes with some associated costs. Let’s take a look at your options, and the costs you can expect from each.

Email Marketing Options

At a high level, there are two main options to consider when it comes to email marketing: outsourcing, and in-house marketing with an email service provider (ESP). Each comes with its own pros and cons, and the difference in price can be huge.

Outsourcing

If you have a larger budget, you can outsource your email marketing to an agency. They’ll be professional, agreeable, and brimming with data (if they’re good). It will cost you, on average, $2,500-$10,000 or more per month.

If you have confidence in the agency you’re using - and the budget to keep them happy - the good news with this option is that you can commission them to do your thinking for you. The flipside here is, ‘who thinks about you better than you?!’ Your messaging is your brand, and your brand is what you are. As a creator, can you afford to let somebody else be responsible for your relationship with your subscribers?

Using an ESP for In-House Marketing

If the budget isn’t there yet, there is another way - you can choose an email service provider (ESP). You can be smart about what you’re sending, when you’re sending it, consistently deliver great value, and build out an in-house team to leverage.

With in-house, you’re keeping your output close to the heart of your operation. You will need to sweat the small stuff, and be on top of every message you send. It will take work on your part. The benefit of doing it this way? You will have a consistent, undiluted, direct line to your audience whenever and however you choose to use it. This is pure communication, and its value has limitless potential.

If you can afford to outsource, great! If you can’t, well, let’s look at saving 50-60% in comparison. And you know what? This way might just be better.

Cost of Email Marketing–The Breakdown

To understand the true cost of email marketing let’s review a few key components that you will need to budget for if you choose to do it in-house.

1. Email software

2. Writing

3. Editing

4. Design

Email software

The cost of email marketing will depend on many factors. The first, and most important of these, is the size of your list. If you’re just starting out and only have a couple of hundred subscribers or less, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to get going for free on most platforms. beehiiv’s Launch package, for example, includes all the tools you need to launch your newsletter - and it won’t cost you a cent to get started.

As you scale your newsletter, your email marketing costs will increase alongside your revenue. How high that figure rises depends on the ESP partner you choose.

Platforms like Substack are initially free for creators, but charge a hefty commission on all your paid subscriptions - 10% + payment processing fees for Substack. If you’re confident your profile and content will attract paying subscribers in sufficient numbers to make a financial difference to you, this model is an option to consider.

Other providers will charge a flat fee for their premium services. Mailchimp, for example, starts at $367.64 per month to access its full suite of functionality.

Here at beehiiv, our Scale package offers total newsletter performance for as low as $84.00 per month, and you get to keep 100% of the money you make. A true fixed price, with a robust growth suite of tools at your fingertips, and zero fees or commissions.

As well as cost, you will also need to consider value. It’s essential that you align these two aspects for your newsletter - what are you getting for your outlay or lost commission revenue? As with all else, the answer will depend on your circumstances, but it should be carefully investigated. We’ve put together a comparison page here with some of the top ESPs for creators to help you decide.

Writing costs

The thing needs to be written, right (and written right)? beehiiv makes it easy to get started on writing your newsletter straight away. It’s creator-friendly and provides templates to make the process as simple as completing a form. This all comes with no extra or hidden costs - it’s all set up for you to go and do what you do.

If you feel that you don’t want to write the newsletter yourself, you’ll need to hire a copywriter. There is wild variation in the potential cost here. You can use freelancer platforms like Fiverr and Upwork to find writers for as little as $25 and as much as $500 per project. Like the price, the quality on offer fluctuates from writer to writer - and the price doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality.

As well as freelancer platforms, there are endless pages of search results on Google for “hire a copywriter,” and LinkedIn also contains armies of writers looking for work. As a general rule, the higher up the page your potential copywriter is, the stronger their reputation will be, and the higher their fee will be - likely much higher than those you’ll find on Upwork or Fiverr.

On average, then, you’re looking at a realistic cost of $150-$750 per email newsletter for goodquality writing.

Editing costs

Editing doesn’t have to be scary. In fact, you will have everything you need with beehiiv to make it easy, user-friendly, and stress-free. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to use the tools provided as part of your subscription to make editing your newsletter something you do yourself at no extra cost.

If you do decide that you need outside input into the editing process, it won’t be difficult to find a professional to outsource this to. A freelance editor who knows what they’re doing will charge anything from $35-$65 per hour, or $0.01-$0.03/word on average.

Design

Your newsletter’s design is important - it needs to look just how you want it to. So of course you’ll need to work with a graphic designer to get it looking great, right? Wrong.

The inbuilt tools that beehiiv provides will enable you to optimize your newsletter to look fantastic and delight your subscribers from day one. If you’re not sure how this works, all the help and support you need is provided for you. beehiiv’s suite of design functions, once again, is included in your subscription and won’t cost you a dime.

You can of course choose to outsource your design to an agency or a freelancer. The cost here depends on the complexity of your images, your base email template, and any custom graphics that will need to be included in future newsletters.

Most agencies or freelance designers will charge anything between $15 and $150 per hour for design.

Strategy

The cost of your newsletter strategy might be more accurately measured in time rather than money.

The key here is knowing what your newsletter is for. What do you want to achieve? If it’s subscriber growth, check out beehiiv’s referral program to boost your numbers in three short steps. If your focus is on monetizing your output you can look at carrying ads, introducing paid subscriptions, and partnering with other brands.

You can outsource your strategy to an agency, which will cost $250-$750 per email, but nobody knows your work better than you do. If you know precisely what you want to accomplish with your newsletter, beehiiv offers all the tools you need to execute your strategy right from your fingertips at no extra cost.

The Cost of Email Marketing: Takeaways

There is no single answer to the question: how much does email marketing cost? You can spend thousands of dollars every month if you want to, or you can instead pay a low, fixed monthly cost of $84.00 to get every resource you need to make your newsletter a success. The choice is yours.

To optimize the results of your endeavors, though - especially if you don’t (yet) have thousands of dollars per month to spend - it is possible to spend just a modest amount to maximize your chances of making great returns on your email marketing.

It really is no sweat to send tailored, compelling messages that compound your impact with readers.

You don’t need to have a team of specialist writers, designers, and software developers to put together a newsletter that looks great and converts.

Discover how quickly and easily you can start getting your best work out there right here, right now.