How Much Does E-Commerce Email Marketing Cost? (Full Details & Examples)

If you’re reading this article, then you’ve probably heard countless marketers rave about just how much impact good email marketing can have on an e-commerce brand. And you know what? They’re not wrong!

One thing they tend to leave out though is how much “good email marketing” actually costs.

In this article, I’ll break down the different costs associated with email marketing using estimates curated from the internet as well as my own experience running an email marketing agency.

The costs are divided into two categories: tools and talent.

Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing entails using emails as a medium for sending the right message, to the right customer, at the right time. Given that most e-commerce brands have (or at least, are trying to have) tens of thousands of customers, you need dedicated software to help you with the “sending” part of your email marketing.

Email marketing platforms like Klaviyo, Mailchimp and Ominsend can send bulk emails and so much more. For now though, let’s take a quick look at their pricing for sending to 5,000 subscribers.

Klaviyo Pricing

While I think Klaviyo is the best, it’s also the most expensive of the three. Sending to about 5,000 subscribers will cost $110/mo for their email-only plan and $125/mo for their email + SMS plan.

Source: Klaviyo Pricing Page

However, cost is relative. If done right, Klaviyo will generate enough email marketing revenue for its cost to seem inconsequential to you.

Mailchimp Pricing

At the time of writing this, sending to 5,000 subscribers on Mailchimp’s email-only plan costs $50/month while their email + SMS plan costs $175.

Source: Mailchimp Pricing Page

However, there are three things to note: 

One, the pricing above is based on a 50% off limited-time offer Mailchimp is currently running, and it only covers your first 12 months. After those twelve months, it is assumed that you’ll automatically start paying $100 and $350 for their email-only and email + SMS plans respectively. Also, there’s no available information on when the offer ends (visit their pricing page to confirm it’s still running).

Two, their email + SMS plan sends SMS to only US customers. That’s a weak proposition in my opinion, but it might still be useful to you if you only serve US customers and don’t plan on expanding anytime soon.

Omnisend

Ah, my first love. Omnisend is the first email marketing platform I ever used, and one of their major selling points has always been that they’re almost as good as Klaviyo (almost), but cheaper. 

It’ll cost $70/month to send to about 5,000 subscribers on Omnisend’s email-only plan. Their email + SMS plan will cost $105.

Source: Omnisend Pricing Page

A word of caution before we move on: Given that the prices of most email marketing platforms are similarly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, it’s crucial to look beyond the price and base your choice on the value each platform can offer your e-commerce brand specifically

Email Marketing Talent

There are two things to discuss under talent: who you’ll need to hire and what they’ll cost you.

The Who (Email Marketing Roles)

The three major roles to hire for are email marketer (to help you manage platforms like Klaviyo, provide general email strategy, and liaise with the rest of your marketing team), email copywriter (to provide the words), and where needed, email designer (to add relevant design elements to your emails).

The Cost

Talent cost wholly depends on your hiring method. At some point in the future, I’ll write a full article on the pros and cons of hiring in-house vs hiring contractors, but for now, here’s everything you need to know.

Hiring In-House

According to Talent.com, full-time email marketers get paid an average salary of $65,000 in the US. 

Source: Talent.com

Most email marketers I know are also capable of producing good copy, so the email marketer you hire can also handle the email copywriter role. However, I’ve never met a person who’s good at email marketing, email copywriting, and email designing all in one. And even if you met such a person, they’d likely demand more than the average salary of $65,000 because they’d be performing 3 roles. 

I’m of the opinion that most e-comm brands (especially those outside highly visual industries like fashion) should send more plain-text emails and less design-heavy emails. However, if you end up having to separately hire an email designer, they cost just as much as email marketers. 

Source: Talent.com

Keep in mind that you’d also be spending both time and money to take care of their payroll tax and employee benefits.

Hiring Contractors

Alternatively, you could hire freelancers or agencies for your email marketing. The benefit of doing this is that they usually charge less than full-time employees (more on this later), their fees are more flexible (you can include a sales commission, for example), and you don’t have to worry about payroll and benefits. 

The disadvantage is that you have less control over contractors than you do over employees. Calling an impromptu meeting, for example, may not fly with many contractors.

Freelancer vs Agency

Freelancers

In terms of their roles, everything I said about hiring full-time email marketers and email designers also applies to their freelancing counterparts. As for their costs, It’s almost impossible to narrow down how much a freelancer will charge. Take one look at Upwork, for example, and you’ll find hourly rates ranging from $10 all the way to $200+ per hour for such freelancers. 

However, given that freelancers don’t have to depend on one employer for their income, they tend to charge less than a full-time employee would for the same workload. Also remember they come with no payroll and benefits.

Agencies

Agencies are different in the sense that rather than needing to hire two or three employees/freelancers to perform the three roles involved in email marketing, you can hire one agency to provide and coordinate those three roles at once.

The major advantage agencies have over employees and freelancers is that agencies handle tens (if not hundreds) of accounts at once and therefore have the chance to accumulate firsthand experience and expertise very quickly.

I’m biased toward hiring agencies - for very obvious reasons (*winks) - but in all fairness, I have to point out one possible disadvantage of working with agencies. Given that agencies handle many clients at once, it’s possible to have situations where each individual client doesn’t feel fully valued. Of course, the best agencies do everything in their power to ensure this doesn’t happen - but it’s still a possibility.

Agency Pricing: Finally, the cost of hiring an email marketing agency wholly depends on the type of agency. For instance, there are “boutique” agencies that only work with e-comm brands doing 8 figures (in yearly revenue) and above. Agencies hardly post their pricing on their website, but from my interactions with other agency founders, I know that boutique agencies usually charge a minimum engagement fee of $10k+ per month. 

This article is written for people who own or work for e-comm brands that are just getting started with email marketing, so I doubt a boutique agency is what you’re looking for at this point. If it’s within your budget though, go for it! While boutique agencies charge a lot, many of them also do a lot to transform not just your email marketing strategy, but your marketing in general.

That said, most email marketing agencies charge much less than that and offer flexible packages to suit your budget. Here at RPM, for example, we’re a small agency that works with e-comm brands doing 6 or 7 figures. While our pricing depends on how much revenue we’re directly generating for you, our minimum engagement fee is $1500/month for email + SMS marketing. The price could be a flat rate or a mixture of a flat rate and a sales commission.

There you have it! No single article can tell you everything you need to know about email marketing, but if you’ve gotten to this point, then you now have a good idea of how much you should be budgeting for your email marketing and the different options available to you.

If you’re interested in getting personalized info on how much your brand should budget, if you’d like a free email marketing audit, or if you’d simply like a second opinion on anything email-related, you can reach me via raphael@raphaelpaulmarketing.net or simply hit the big orange button below!