Issue #214 All About Email

Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Welcome to Issue #214 of All About Email!

Last week was about “The House of Dynamite”. Ironically, I messed up last week’s email with the send time and clipping (again), and it bombed (pun intended). 🤦‍♂️

This week, I’m having an open discussion about the cost of running a newsletter and why you need to know your costs!

Let’s go! 👇

Last week’s newsletter, despite some lovely comments on LinkedIn and some encouraging replies via the inbox, didn’t land with the majority of you lovely people. 😢

And, that’s fine, I was on quite a roll and it had to come to an end…hopefully, this week will be more of a winner.

(I go to town with emojis this week, more on that later.)

Remember, if you aren’t running a newsletter but you are sending email campaigns, this week still applies to you. 👇

🚨 Context is very important! So, let’s set that now:

** You will have staff costs, potentially sponsorship costs, product costs (COGS) and integration costs to name but a few.

🧠 Regardless of whether you send a newsletter or an email (marketing) campaign, someone somewhere should know how much it costs.

From running this newsletter, I’ve learned a few things that I wanted to share:

After moving from Mailchimp to Beehiiv, I’ve monetised this newsletter in a few ways, as I’ve learned it’s not sustainable to write this newsletter for free.

So far:

If I use my hourly rate, it costs between $450 and $600 per newsletter to produce, and that doesn’t include Beehiiv, Stripe, and bank fees, as well as domain and mailbox costs.

😬 That figure hits hard!

I knew this figure in the back of my mind, but when you see it written down, it’s huge, and because I write a weekly newsletter (with some breaks), let’s take the average (4 hours) time to write:

🤯 $30,000 per year (not including other costs) to write this newsletter.

I’ve only covered 4.64% of those costs so far this year.

✅ Now, {{first_name|friend}}, I don’t necessarily want all my costs covered; otherwise, I would be writing this newsletter full-time, and I don’t want to do that at the moment.

Last week, I said “not every email needs to sell”, and that’s true!

🚨 However, if you’re a business that relies on email as a sales channel, you don’t want it to run at a loss, like my newsletter does.

You will need to know your costs to make sure your emails work as part of your omni-channel efforts (that’s right, folks, email doesn’t sell on its own).

✅ At worst, you want your emails to break even over the course of a quarter; ideally, if you are a business, you want them to make money and get that “return on investment.”

However, if you aren’t selling a product or service like me, then you need to measure other goals against your costs:

Black Friday Sales have already started, and every year, Jordie Van Rijn runs a Black Friday & Cyber Monday tip thread on LinkedIn, and this year is no different.

There are lots of great tips in the link above, and here’s mine so you don’t have to go searching:

💡 Offer your customers a "Wish List". An easy place to see all their products, and if they are on offer. Bonus points for turning this into an email(s).

✅ If you don't already offer wishlists, make sure they integrate with your CRM/ESP (or can be connected via a 3rd-party, e.g., Zapier).

This makes the email automation much easier.

And of course, please be careful about how these emails are sent, in terms of timing and frequency, alongside your other holiday messaging.

🎉 If you want to hear more from me, join the Live Webinar with Paul Charlton of WP Tuts on Thursday. 🎉

That’s it for this week. 👋

Welcome to Curiosity Corner! Each week, I throw one question your way… not always about email marketing, but always worth a reply.

This week’s question. 👇

In last week’s poll, I asked if and how you use AI in your inbox “No - Only humans here.” led the way with 44.44% of the vote! 👇

Want to know what I'm listening to while I write?

Every week, when the newsletter drops, I'll share the track of the moment to create an unbelievably eclectic playlist just for your inbox.

🚨 If you’re interested in sponsoring the “All About Email” newsletter, you can find all the details in this Google Doc.

This week's excellent and insightful email news & tips:

If you have any questions about this email or email marketing, please reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.

I hope you have a great week! 👋