What email marketing should cost
Flows versus campaigns, the platform's fee versus the agency's, two things to refuse outright, and where the two emails a month in our Standard tier fit.
Email is priced strangely because it is two different products sold under one word. There is the software that sends the mail, which charges by the size of your list, and there is the person who writes it, who charges by the month, the email or the hour. Most quotes blur the two, and the blur is where the money goes.
What is the difference between a flow and a campaign?
A flow is an email that sends itself when something happens: someone subscribes, someone leaves a cart, someone has not bought in a while. It is written once, set up once, and then works every day without anyone touching it. A campaign is an email sent to the whole list, or a segment of it, on a date somebody chose: the monthly note, the launch, the sale.
The cost structures are opposite. A flow is expensive to build and free to run, and most of its value arrives in the months after the invoice. A campaign is cheap to build and expensive to keep building, because the cost is a person's attention every month for as long as you want the list to stay warm. An agency that charges you monthly for flows that were finished in week three is charging rent on finished work.
| Question | Flow | Campaign |
|---|---|---|
| When does it send? | When a trigger fires: a sign-up, an abandoned cart | When somebody decides: a date on a calendar |
| How often is it written? | Once, then revised a few times a year | Every time it goes out |
| Where is the cost? | In the setup | In the ongoing attention |
| How do you judge it? | Orders it recovers or starts, per month | Revenue and clicks from each send |
| What should you pay for? | A build with an end, not a fee that runs forever | A monthly fee that covers the writing |
What does the platform charge, and what does the agency charge?
The platform fee is the easy one. Every mainstream email tool prices by the number of people on your list, from nothing at the bottom to a few hundred dollars a month for a list in the tens of thousands, with the send volume as a second dial. It is paid to the platform, on your card, in your account. If an agency is paying it for you, ask why, because the account and the list should be yours on the day you part.
The agency fee is for the writing, the design, the setup of the flows, the segmentation and the reporting. It comes in three shapes: a flat monthly retainer, a per-email price, or a share of the revenue the emails produce. The share model sounds aligned and is the one to be most careful with, because the agency then has every reason to send more, discount harder and claim every order the platform can attribute, and the platform attributes generously.
Per-email pricing suits a brand that knows exactly how many it wants and can brief them. A retainer suits a brand that wants someone to own the calendar. Whichever you choose, the setup of the flows should be priced as a project with an end, not folded into the monthly forever.
What should you refuse?
Two things, without discussion.
- A rented or purchased list. Anyone who offers to “add contacts” to your list is offering to get your domain marked as spam. The people did not ask to hear from you, the mail providers know it, and the damage lands on the emails your real customers wanted. A list is built from people who gave you an address. There is no shortcut that survives contact with a spam filter.
- Reporting that leads with the open rate. The major mail apps now fetch every message on the reader's behalf, before the reader has seen it, as a privacy measure, and the platform counts that as an open. The number drifts upward whatever you send. An agency that puts it at the top of the report is either unaware of this or hoping you are.
A third, softer refusal: a discount in every email. It trains the list to wait, and it means the agency is buying its own results with your margin. The welcome can carry an offer. The monthly should be worth opening without one.
Which three emails do most of the work?
A welcome, an abandoned-checkout email and a monthly note. The first two are flows and run themselves once they are written. The third is the campaign you have to keep writing. Between them they do most of what email can do for a brand, and almost everything beyond them is refinement.
- The welcome goes the moment someone subscribes. It confirms the decision, says what to expect, and asks one thing. It is the most-opened email you will ever send, so it should be written slowly.
- The abandoned-checkout email goes within the hour, then once more a day later. Its one job is to bring the buyer back to the cart, ideally without a discount. Judge it on orders recovered.
- The monthly goes the same week every month and carries one story, one product and one ask. Judge it on revenue and clicks, never on opens.
The longer piece on the three, what each should say and how to judge it, is at /blog/email-marketing-the-three-emails-that-pay. This one is about the money.
How does email fit in our Standard tier?
Email is part of the full loop rather than a channel we sell on its own. Standard, at $4,000 a month, includes two email campaigns a month beside the videos, the carousels, the page optimisations, the articles, the answer-engine entries and the monthly call. The welcome and the abandoned-checkout flows are written and set up in the first weeks and then left running. The two campaigns are the monthly and a second, shorter note, usually a launch or a single story.
Starter, at $2,000 a month, does not include email at all. It is one channel, chosen on the first call: ads, content or search. If email is the thing you need and nothing else, we are the wrong shape for you, and a good freelance email writer on a per-email price will serve you better than our list will. We would rather say that on the call than sell you a loop you only need a third of.
The platform fee is never inside our number. It is yours, on your card, in your account, as the ad spend is. The list is yours, the flows are yours, and if you leave with thirty days' notice everything keeps sending exactly as it did the day before.
What does a fair quote look like?
- The platform named, its fee stated separately, and the account in your name.
- The flows priced as a build with an end date, and listed: welcome, abandoned checkout, and whatever else is proposed, with the reason for each.
- The campaigns priced per month, with the number of sends, who writes them and who approves them.
- The report defined before the first send: revenue from email, orders recovered, clicks. Opens may appear in it; they may not lead it.
- No list bought, rented or “enriched”, in writing.
- What happens when you leave: the list, the templates and the flows stay yours, and the agency's access ends.
Email is the only channel you own. Nobody can change the algorithm on your list, and nobody can raise the price of reaching it. That is exactly why it should cost less than the channels that can, and why a quote that makes it the expensive one is telling you something about the quote. The service page is at /services/email-marketing.