Why you should pay per email

Most email broadcast software hides the marginal cost of sending email.

In other words, most organizations consider email a fixed cost, “we pay $xx for email whether we send 1 or 100,000.” This can lead to bad email behavior.

Direct mail has very clear marginal costs to send a piece of mail. Many look at the lack of marginal cost a selling point on email and are probably surprised I would be saying a per piece cost is a good thing.

The marginal cost of paper mail forces you to consider the potential net revenue every time you send out a mailing. When the apparent marginal costs drops to near zero, like in email, the returns necessary to justify an action also significantly drop.

This is often a good thing, since it allows you to engage your constituents in ways that aren’t economical on the direct mail side. But it can lead quickly to over communicating with your list.

So even if your email provider doesn’t charge a marginal cost to send email, your organization should begin to come up with an internal number. This number should take into account time for list management as well as costs associated with unsubscribes.

Every time a person unsubscribes from your email there is a real cost to your organization.

Right now this is more art than science, but making sure to capture all the costs of email is a good habit to get into.