Why you need to estimate your volume to pick a mass email tool...
I put this graph together for our eNews online seminar, summarizing how the monthly costs of a bulk email tool vary as your list size gets bigger. I expected there to be a difference, but I didn't realize it was going to be this pronounced - the list of tools on the right are in order of cheapest to more expensive for a very small list (250 people, who each get one email a month) - and there's a very substantial flip-flop as those tools that are cheap for small lists become some of the most expensive for big ones.
And this doesn't even account for the difference between tools that charge based on the number of emails, and those that charge based on the number of constituents in your list. This graph smooths over that difference by assuming you're sending everyone on your list one email a month.
So the moral: you really need to have a sense of how many emails per month you expect to send, and about how many people you expect to have on your list, both now and in the future, before it makes any sense to start comparing prices for bulk email tools.
posted by laura at 3:33 PM Permalink
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4 Comments:
Hi Laura,
I've just gone through pricing several of these tools out for my org, and we're likely going to use Vertical Response because the pricing isn't so different despite our large list. I'll be honest, I'm not the best at math, so maybe I got this wrong, but when I calculated 50K emails sent using Vertical Response, I got $361 (with their nonprofit pricing). When I calculated 50K emails for Constant Contact, I called and their nonprofit price is $375/month (getting cheaper the longer you sign up with them). I'm using the same method as you, because their models are different (one is per email address, the other per email sent). Am I going wrong somewhere? I know our costs will likely be higher using VR because we'll likely be sending out more than one email a month, but if we weren't, wouldn't the costs would be even?
Thanks for this, Rachel! A couple of things... this chart is using list rather than nonprofit discount prices (I should have mentioned), because for a number of the tools nonprofit discounts aren't published and seem to change depending on who you ask. But in my experience none of these have dramatically different nonprofit prices (about a 15% discount is common).
Even using VR's discount pricing, I see a rate of .0085 per email for 50,000 emails, which would calculate out to $425/month - no? Or are you perhaps pricing the Salesforce version of VR, which I know is a bit different, and perhaps has different rates? The Constant Contact rates aren't published up to a 50,000 person list, so good to have a ballpark on that.
By the way, this chart will no doubt go immediately out of date anyway, so consider it illustrative rather than an authoritative set of prices...
Oh yes, that's true, I was definitely looking at nonprofit prices (but no connection to salesforce). I was just concerned because it looked like $600 for 50K emails with VR and that freaked me out! Whew. :)
As of yesterday, this chart is out date, as predicted. :) Vertical Response is now offering up to 10,000 emails per month for free. http://blog.verticalresponse.com/verticalresponse_blog/2008/04/non-profits-ema.html
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