The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing

3

Making Money: The Economics of Email

I live close to a golf course, so my garage is always full of golf balls collected by my children. We literally have big plastic containers filled with golf balls sorted by type and condition. While I like to keep a container with the best of them in my trunk to meet my endless need, my children have other ideas.

Mitchell and Madeline, who seem to have the same entrepreneurial spirit I have, would rather sell these balls back to the golfers as they drive by our house on their way home.

The reality is, turning a profit on free golf balls might prove less profitable than they hope. After all, attracting people to a curbside store will require a communication strategy. They’ll need to buy a sign to put in the yard, and since not everyone lives on our street, they may have to place an ad in the country club newsletter to let people know when they’ll be in the yard, get the other neighbors to drive by our house, and explain why it’s worth driving out of their way for some used golf balls.

If they aren’t careful, they might end up spending more money to advertise the golf balls than the value of their time spent acquiring them in the first place. A lot of small business owners make the same mistake. In order to be profitable, marketing communications have to result in more money taken in than they cost.

This chapter explains how to efficiently use email marketing to make sure the money you spend on all your marketing efforts generates enough ...