Is Email Marketing an Expense or an Investment?

Do you realize how much your perspective and outlook on certain things in life directly impacts your drive, your performance, and your end result?

Take exercising for example. One person might look at it as a means to achieve a high level of physical fitness to enable him or her to live a longer, healthier lifestyle while the other might look at it as a waste of time and something to do only when he or she absolutely has to. Can you take a wild guess as to who might make the conscious effort to take the stairs when possible and who might opt for the elevator option?

A company’s outlook on email marketing is no different – there are those who view it as strictly an expense and there are others that view it as an investment. Taking these two viewpoints into account, you should expect to see differences in the amount of time and effort involved as well as in the distribution of funds put forth into making email marketing campaigns successful.

Thinking of email marketing as an expense means that your interest lies in cutting costs and keeping your annual budget under control. Limiting your outreach potential because of your strict budget constraints will only result in limited benefits from your email marketing efforts. All campaigns will be carried out in a half-fast manner with little attention to detail, and the end performance of your email marketing efforts will suffer as a result. On the other hand, thinking of email marketing as an investment is thinking of your email marketing as an opportunity to generate awareness of your brand name and establish long-term relationships with valuable prospects. It means investing time, effort, and money to constantly monitor your progress and tweak certain aspects of your email marketing to take full advantage of the resources at your disposal.

I’ve dealt with businesses on both sides of the spectrum. Those who go the extra mile to identify their performance goals and act accordingly and those who just want to get the process over with and move on.

So, what’s it going to be? Are you going to spend the time and effort necessary to ensure that your email marketing campaigns are carried out without a hitch or are you just going to slap something together, send it out, and hope for the best?