It’s not your fault that you know so little about how brands price email marketing software!
If you are reading this post, you perhaps are in a perfect position to go-to-market with your software product. But how much should you charge for it? Sure, you have scoured the net, and your competitors’ pricing has only confused you further – some charge too much while others offer their wares for free.
Might we suggest a solution?
Rather than studying the market for direct prices, how about figuring out the parameters that govern said costing. And that’s what this article helps you figure out.
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Putting a Price on an Email Marketing Software Primarily Depends on How It Is Packaged!
Therefore, do not proceed to price before asking the following questions:
How Comprehensive Is Your Email Creation Tool Within the Product Gamut?
Various service providers offer pre-made templates, while several others also provide easy-to-toggle UI and drag-drop tools to create bespoke templates. The latter is priced higher.
Does Your Marketing Software Offer Advanced Analytics?
And we are not stopping at click-throughs and bounce rates! Do analytics in your automation software serve up audience geolocations, track conversions, monitor customer behaviour, and integrate with Google Analytics? Does it present all of this data is an easy-to-read interactive chart, graphs, and reports?
Does It Offer Social Media Integration?
Your clients may want to grow their contact list, schedule live events, or track follower engagement to figure out what’s popular. Therefore, if your product provides an interface through which they can integrate with social media or multiple digital channels seamlessly, you can charge more.
Can Your Product Truly Put Marketing on Autopilot?
For instance, an email marketing software like SendX can. Along with sending geo-targeted emails, this service can automate intelligent email campaigns, trigger welcome communication, and much more that saves brands a great deal of time and resources. It also offers advanced reporting and analytics, along with progressive profiling. The more comprehensive the automation, the higher the price.
You might also find other software like SendX that provide a comprehensive range of features at affordable prices – the idea is to explore and compare what other resources are offering before calculating a price that best suits your features.
Can Your Automated Email Marketing Software Help with Customer Segmentation?
Is there an interface where brands can finely segment customers and send different communication tailored to their precise needs? A product built around sending one mass email with slim segmenting options can also be made available for free.
Does It Contain a Powerful Tool for Contact Management?
Brands automate email marketing for millions of customers every day. Therefore, the platform used for sending promotional communication can help acquire, manage, and sort email contacts. Some products go as far as automatically deleting duplicate or dead contacts and directly integrating with in-house CRM and CMS.
Now That You Know the Key Parameters Responsible for Pricing, Let’s Work Out the Tangibles
There are numerous subscriptions or lump sum payment models through which you can charge customers. Here is a list of three of them. The one you choose will entirely depend on how you prefer to engage with your clients.
Charging Per Hour
This model works incredibly well if your product offers a wide variety of bespoke features. You can provide customers with a license to rent out a few plugins as and when they need it. For instance, fix a standard hourly rate for things like compiling and uploading email lists, designing and developing a template, or integrating their web portal with your software.
Clients don’t need these features at all times, and thus, paying an hourly fee to hire these automated services makes a lot of sense. This model is also beneficial for you, as hourly rates are higher than lump sums over the long run.
One-Time Fee
You’ll come across various clients who believe in email marketing but want to keep majority control over sending, compiling, and deleting emails instead of total automation. For them, you can offer a starter version of your product that includes gathering and uploading email addresses. It can also feature an email template creation tool and a virtual training assistant.
Said assistant must be comprehensive enough to train clients on using email marketing software to automate emails partially. Such pre-packaged setups go at a flat rate, depending on where they pull email lists from and the templating tool’s complexity. You can also offer a choice to subscribe to premium or advanced tools over and above the base rate for customers who, after using your product for some time, may wish to elevate their service contract.
End-to-End Service Pricing
You will likely come across clients who believe in email marketing’s prowess but don’t want to do it themselves. For such customers, you can design an end-to-end option that includes the entire service spectrum from setting up their automated email client/ account, compiling and uploading email lists, creating and mailing marketing communique on their behalf, and generating performance reports.
Here are a few examples through which you can automate buyer journeys for your customers:
- Welcome Emails- Take care of drafting and automating welcome emails for new customers or subscribers.
- Lead Nurturing Emails- With your product’s help, you can set up a series of automated emails to be sent to potentials that enquire about your client’s offerings. Such communication must educate on how your client can address their need gaps.
- Reminder Emails- You can set up emails to remind your client’s customers of important dates, events, contract renewals, or fee payments.
- Offer or Discount Emails – You can provide automation for a periodic or ad-hoc series of flash sales and discount emails. This communication can also inform a client that they have reached a VIP status with the brand.
You can dole out a full-service spectrum on a monthly fee basis. The subscription money can either be fixed or floating, depending on the number of marketing campaigns you create and send. Such a model proves to be an excellent source of stable and recurring revenue.
Over to You
If you are in email marketing automation, study the features and prices of the mailing tools already in steady supply and ideally provide your clientele with all three service and pricing models. As for brass tacks, on average, a medium-sized business can spend anywhere between US$9 to $1000 each month, depending on the level of automation and the subsequent success they witness.
On the other hand, if clients want to work with an agency that may employ an in-house email marketing software, they may end up paying anywhere between US$ 300 to $500 per month. Therefore, there is no magic number around which you can price your email marketing software. You must calculate its worth based on the questions mentioned above.
