Take a quick listen to a recent interview with OpenMoves Partner, Ronen Yaari as he discusses how much you should invest in email marketing. Grab your coffee, hit play, lean back and enjoy a quick 5 minutes of e-mail marketing talk.

Notes to Keep Your Eyes Amused

Staring out: How much should I pay for email marketing?

You love the idea of using email to drive business. But now you need to know how much is it going to cost, or — more importantly — how much to invest in your email marketing budget. Email has the aroma of being inexpensive, so you’re thinking that a minimal monthly fee that you can deduct from your expense account should do it. I suggest you take a step back and look at the bigger picture and on an annual basis, before you take out your credit card.

Split up your email marketing budget into three parts:

• Setup and template design
• Account management fees
• Email volume fees

A Realistic Scenario

You have a list of 5K subscribers and you are sending a monthly email and doing re-mail to those who did not open the first time. Your annual volume is around 100K emails, which will cost about $1,200 annually.

Next… If you are going to show off your brand 100,000 times this year, it had better look good. So investing in a custom template, database setup and training will cost you another $1,000.

Finally, why not get a pro to help you put your emails together and send them out for you each month – so you know this puppy is actually going to walk. Account management for 12 mailings costs about $3,000 a year. So in total you are investing $5,200 for the first year or $.05/email.

Bottom Line

For $5K all you have to do is provide the content and imagery and the rest will get done. But is it worth it?

ROI acid test:

1. How many of your products or services do you need to sell to make $5K in profit?
2. Do you sell directly from your site or do you have a lead gen form and then follow up? How much is a lead worth?
3. What is the value of having everyone in your database hear from you several times a year – just to know you exist? Is it good for retention, x-selling and referrals?

From our experience, and we are sooooo biased, if you use best practices and keep your eye on the big picture, your ROI is almost guaranteed.