As you begin to look into the options for an email marketing solution you will come across different pricing models.

One model is called pay-per-send. This is where you typically pay a premium to send a campaign and then after that each email is costed at a very nominal rate, such as 1 cent or 1 penny.

The stated advantage of this pricing approach is that you only pay for what you send. In principal this seems a good idea but in practise it does not benefit a business that is serious about targeted email campaigns (as opposed to scattergun email broadcasts).

The alternative model is paying for the number of subscribers in your database, in other words pay-per-subscriber. This is a good option where you are focusing on building up your subscriber database and wish to have the security of a set monthly cost.

This database building approach is a solid foundation on which to build a regular communication strategy (such as a newsletter) complemented by targeted email offers (ie. special offers) for your most responsive subscribers.

However, the situation can get out of control if your subscriber database is already or starts to become very large. Without the knowledge to identify your key contacts and separate those out from your inactive subscribers your database becomes just one large mass of contacts and little else.

At Mailvivo, we empower you with the solution to reach out to people in your database and revitalise them with emails that they have genuine interest in. We give you the visibility on your top performers as well as on your non-responders. With a flat-rate monthly fee approach you do not have to concern yourself with campaign delivery fees before running targeted campaigns on different segments of your database. Every marketing study shows that targeted emails, such as those based on previous subscriber activity, works infinitely better than just a standard email blast. The excuse of not having the resources to run such campaigns can be dismissed with tools, such as Mailvivo, that are as easy-to-use as they are effective.

By seeking to identify and ultimately weed out non-responders with intelligent reactivation campaigns you are not only preserving the vitality of your own subscriber database but you are also doing the world of Spam a favour... by not sending any!

Another even more important reason to maintain and target only active subscribers is that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are starting to look at user engagement as a measure to whether or not your campaigns will hit the inbox or get automatically junked due to poor sending reputation. Focus on subscriber engagement better with a pricing model that makes you consider the value of your subscriber database in terms of their activity, not just how much it costs to send to each person.

By complementing a subscriber-based pricing model with the provision of your own email consultant you can be sure that with Mailvivo you will not lack the help or support to move into the new era of digital communications where the subscriber comes first. Sending emails is very easy but doing it effectively is actually much more challenging without the right advice.

We believe a pricing model that encourages you to adopt a 'subscriber-first' mentality will ultimately serve your organisation best. It is often the difference between your message being overlooked as compared to one that arrives in the inbox at the right time and is positively responded to.

answer provided by Mark Gooding, Business Development Director @ mailvivo