Email marketing has become a vital tool in your marketing toolbox, and it isn’t just a matter of blasting messages to every email address you can get hold of (you’re not still doing that are you?)
But why pay when I can send out email free from my own computer?
You can, of course, send emails out from your own computer. However, if you’ve ever tried this for more than a handful of addresses you’ll know how frustrating this can be!
First, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or your network or your IT Department will do everything they can to make this as difficult as possible for you. Why? Because sending out bulk email is what ‘spammers’ do. Even if you’ve only got a few hundred, your email delivery may be limited, slowed down or even stopped altogether. So, you’ll have to split up your email lists into tiny parts to send it. Imagine having to do that every time you want to send an email to your clients or customers.
Know what? You’ll never even know if they were all sent because you’ve no report on how many were sent, how many were opened, what links were clicked on, whether they were forwarded to friends or colleagues. Some ISP’s silently stop sending after you’ve hit your sending limit anyway (often as low as 500 emails a day) – so you might think you’ve sent it out but people didn’t get it.
And then, when you eventually send it out, there’s the ‘out of offices’, unsubscribes, bounced and undeliverable emails to deal with.
No wonder those company newsletters always seem to go out later and later, then eventually peter out altogether!
But ‘so-and-so’ lets me send free emails
There are some services that offer a free tier to their prices. You can usually tell when someone is using this as there will be a big ‘Mailchimp’ logo (or a.n.other) in the email template. There might be adverts as well, or the email message looks very similar to lots of other emails. Bottom line is it doesn’t always look very professional.
The other issue with free tiers is that they act like a magnet for spammers. This means either the service has to police the lists very hard, in which case you might get blocked when you upload a list, or alternatively the service might get blocked by large ISP’s for sending spam, in which case your emails don’t get delivered to your customers.
So, we don’t offer a free tier – we just offer a reliable, robust email system for you to promote yourself to your clients or prospective clients where you have asked their permission.
How much will email marketing cost?
There are 2 options depending on the number of subscribers and frequency of your email marketing:
- On pay-as-you-go there is no set monthly cost, so the only costs you incur are when you actually send an email, which is perfect if you don’t send so regularly.
Each campaign you send incurs a £5 flat fee + 1.5p per email address sent to (only 1p each if over 10,000 emails)
So, the cost to send a professional looking email offer or newsletter to say 500 of your clients would be only £12.50 plus VAT - Or you can pay a set monthly emailing cost, on a sliding scale, based on the total number of subscribers on your lists. And if your lists are under 50,000, then you can send out as many emails you want a month for that monthly amount. Great for budgeting and if you’re sending regularly. Prices start at just £15 per month plus VAT for up to 500 subscribers.
Download our email marketing guide
For further information and prices, download our guide on ‘Email Marketing Made Easy‘.