Email Marketing solutions

Direct Email Marketing – Is It Worth It?

There’s a misconception that direct email marketing isn’t worth the effort. Nothing could be farther from the truth; consider the alternatives. In 1995, Dartnell's 28th Sales Force Compensation Survey estimated that the average cost of a sales call, whether by telephone or face-to-face was over $95. Some estimate it to be much higher! And the cost probably hasn’t gone down much since then.

But compare that number to the average cost of a direct email marketing campaign which is mere pennies per impression and the value difference becomes quite remarkable. Let’s assume that I want to put my products or services in front of one thousand people. For round numbers, we’ll use $100 as the cost of sales call and 5 cents as the cost of each impression of a direct email marketing campaign.

The sales call campaign costs me $100,000 dollars. The direct email marketing campaign costs me $50. Even if we grant that the yield of a sales call is 20% and that of an email promotion is 1%, the cost per order for a direct email marketing campaign is $5 versus $500 for making sales calls!

Even compared to traditional print advertising, an email marketing campaign wins. An average black and white page in a magazine with a circulation of 25,000 might cost as little as $2500. But that’s still 10 cents an impression!

Of course, there are other value-oriented benefits. There is no substantial overhead associated with a direct email marketing campaign. Too, at the low-cost of such promotions, you can afford to hit your lists many more times per year than a traditional sales call approach.