Whenever we talk about digital marketing or online presence at large, emails sneak into the conversation without fail. It is an irreplaceable link in the online value chain. Businesses of all sizes use emails at multiple instances throughout the customer journey and their sales funnel. Therefore, it is necessary to plan your email marketing budget upfront to avoid unforeseen expenses as emails directly impact your client-facing operations and your marketing activities. In this article, we will go through a five-step mini guide to understand how you can plan your email marketing pricing plan for 2022 and avoid any lapses. Let’s get started:
#1 Study Your Email List And Past Year’s Email Audit Report
Before you begin with the finances, it is necessary that you analyze your previous performance. Start with an email audit if you haven’t already performed one. An email audit gives you a thorough understanding of the strategies and activities that worked for you and the ones that didn’t reap any benefits.
Moreover, you also need to study the changes in your email list over time and correlate which factors are likely to contribute based on the fresh insights. This step will serve as the foundation for your email marketing budgeting for 2022.
#2 Devise Your Targeted Achievements In Terms Of Email Metrics
In this step, you need to summarize your targets in terms of achievable email metrics on YoY and MoM basis to get a clear understanding of the deliverables. I find that you will get tremendous clarity on email marketing pricing once you have defined the email metrics since you would be able to calculate the workload for respective activities.
You will also get an idea of the time and resources required for achieving each of those metrics. Moreover, you can condense the whole process into smaller, manageable units. For instance, you can calculate the man-hours required for template design.
#3 Prioritize Email Marketing Activities With Respect To Their Impact On Your Revenue
Now comes the crucial part. You might have a rough figure in mind by this time – the total number of man-hours required vs. human resource availability at your firm. In most cases, your estimated efforts for achieving desired email metrics would be on the higher side. For this reason, you will need to set your priorities straight.
You can easily do it by developing an understanding of basic and essential activities alongside the activities needed due to their cascading nature. You can further allocate priority on the basis of their profitability so that you can make a well-informed decision. The impact on your revenue should be at the center of this phase as it forms a major chunk of your email marketing spending.
#4 Make A List Of Email Resources, Tools, And Training Needed
Next, you need to enlist all the resources, tools, and training that your staff might need when working on email marketing in 2022. The email resources include content marketing-derived properties like ebooks and integration with your social media and onsite optimization.
This may not fall directly under email marketing, but such calculations are essential when estimating your ROI. In many cases, you may need to buy additional tools and train your staff to be in line with the latest trends in the email marketing industry.
#5 Allocate Budget To Each Activity And Develop An Outsourcing Plan If Required
Finally, you can start allocating the budget components to each of the activities as you will get a detailed breakdown of the direct costs and overheads. At the same time, the costs incurred on the email marketing tools along with the learning and development will be added to it. This will also help finalize human resource allocation and give you an idea of how many campaigns your team will be able to undertake.
The budget allocation will also give you an idea if you need to outsource certain parts of your email marketing activities. This is quite common since outsourcing a complicated section of the process is cheaper than doing it in-house. You can also plan out in-house hirings if needed to come up with an optimal budget plan for your email marketing department.
Summing Up
I would like to stress the fact that your target should be to increase your ROI. This helps assort your priorities and in the process of allocating budget to various cost centers. While many businesses do not plan email marketing budgets, it is in your best interest to do so since it helps you improve the customer journey. An email marketing plan combined with smart budget allocation keeps your resource optimization at optimal levels and provides your organization with a clear line of action. I hope that this article helps you plan your email marketing budget for 2022 in a better way.