In public relations, cutting costs is not an easy feat. You need resources to maintain a brand’s image and build strong media relationships. Lowering the budget could mean compromising the value of communications.
With email marketing, though, PR firms and professionals can still count on successful outreach and audience engagement while reducing expenses. Small and strategic optimizations in PR email marketing are enough to save money over time without losing effectiveness.
Budget-friendly email marketing for public relations is a real thing. And this guide will take you through four simple and easy strategies to achieve more with less.
1) Choose Only the Necessary Features
Have you ever regretted an impulse purchase once the instant gratification faded away? Most of us have. Choosing the ideal email marketing platform shouldn’t be one of these purchases. Instead, it must result from thorough research, especially when facing budget constraints.
Saying yes to every feature just because it’s available will lead to overspending. You probably won’t need many complex functionalities, just the ones that cover your needs. If you already have email software but never use most of its features, it’s time to revisit your choice.
As a PR professional, you’ll have to handle multiple campaigns and events. So, search for a service with features that align with key PR activities like media outreach and event promotion. Here are some key features to prioritize:
- List segmentation: PR professionals often need to tailor their emails to different audience groups, such as journalists or industry influencers. Opt for a solution with robust yet easy to set up segmentation. Creating targeted lists with your ESP ensures you won’t have to pay for overly complex customer relationship management systems.
- Automated workflows: Email automation saves you time while increasing engagement with prompt messages. Simple automated emails can help you handle scenarios like following-up after a press release or event. However, consider skipping pricey capabilities like upselling emails—which could be more useful for eCommerce.
- Customizable email templates: Built-in templates are a great way to optimize email creation. For instance, you can use them to create outreach emails, press release announcements, or holiday wishes. Choose software with customization options and sleek design to add elements like your branding assets, strong CTAs, and interactive options.
Let’s take a scenario where you want to organize a product launch event and promote it via email. You’ll need a platform that offers essential email marketing tools for events, starting with built-in templates to tweak as you wish. In some budget-friendly email marketing tools, you can find a library of templates dedicated to events. Here are some customizable and responsive event templates by Moosend:
Also, the right software must offer robust list segmentation to divide subscribers into smaller groups like media contacts, VIP members, or past attendees. This kind of segmentation allows you to tailor your messaging to each group—for instance, send event previews to VIPs and influencers. That way, you ensure all segments receive email content aligned with their interests and relationship with your brand.
You’ll also want to automate the RSVP process using an email series. Automation will help nurture recipients all the way from the welcome email sharing event details to the post-event follow-ups including key takeaways, additional resources, etc. What you probably won’t need are features like transactional emails that are more relevant for online stores. Effective segmentation will be enough to make a success out of your event email promotion.
2) Follow List Hygiene Best Practices
A crucial aspect of making your email marketing work is owning an engaged email list. Your lists consist of different audience groups like clients, industry experts, and journalists—and they expect relevant and targeted communications.
Most email marketing solutions charge based on the number of contacts and/or email sends. But you can also find software that allows for unlimited sends. This doesn’t mean you should email every recipient on your list, though, since it will cost you money you can’t afford.
But there’s more to that. Disengaged recipients, spam complaints, and bounces might drag down your deliverability rates, and consequently, your reputation.
To manage your resources effectively, you should create a strong and healthy list with these best practices:
- Use double opt-in to ensure you have the user’s permission to convert them into subscribers. This process allows them to confirm their email address, letting you know they’re actually interested in your business updates. Plus, you can stay confident your emails get delivered in real inboxes.
- Remove invalid or duplicate email addresses and subscribers who haven’t engaged with your emails for some time. Conduct list cleaning at least twice a year for your email marketing efforts to stay effective. For the PR industry, an alternative is to do so after major PR campaigns or events.
- Automate re-engagement campaigns to see if you can get dormant recipients to interact with your emails again. For example, if a journalist has stopped responding to press releases, send a re-engagement email including an incentive like an industry report to spark their interest.
- Include a prominent unsubscribe link or button. Every stakeholder, customer, or media contact on your list should trust you to respect their decisions. That’s what letting them unsubscribe means. What you can do is create an inspiring unsubscribe page as a last resort. There, they can handle their email preferences, such as receiving only event invites or industry updates. If it doesn’t bear fruit, let them opt out.
Cuisinart created a clever re-engagement campaign to win back inactive subscribers. See how they included two options to choose from? One directs the user to a page where they can change their email preferences and the other to the unsubscribe option. The layout is simple and clean, centered around the two CTAs and the corresponding -and so cute- images.
3) Optimize Your Sending Volume and Frequency
As already discussed, many email marketing services tier price structures based on the email volume. To maximize your email ROI, plan everything beforehand, considering which email campaigns to invest in.
Less is more. Especially in the PR world, where brand reputation is key, sending too many emails may backfire. On the other hand, optimizing your sending frequency leads to fewer unsubscribes and spam complaints.
Instead of bombarding subscribers with every campaign, prioritize sending fewer but more targeted and valuable messages for each segment. Use list segmentation to send emails based on each group’s needs and interests, for example sharing a sneak peek at a new product to corporate clients.
Also, focus on email campaigns that are more likely to result in high coverage or stakeholder engagement, such as important media events. Less critical emails like routine updates may interest only specific groups. So, consider cutting down on these emails when it comes to other segments.
According to a survey from Databox, 72.09 percent of companies adjust their sending frequency based on their recipient’s level of engagement:
Sometimes it’s a good idea to reduce reminders and follow-up emails. One or two reminder emails before an event or media pitch are valuable to provide information. However, sending reminders every couple of days will tire recipients. So, keeping these emails to a bare minimum and making them concise shows readers you respect their time.
Lastly, analyze your email metrics to understand which campaigns result in increased conversions and engagement. You should do the same to find the optimal sending frequency. This kind of optimization helps PR teams provide relevant content, which in turn allows them to control email marketing costs and boost email ROI.
4) Have a Dedicated In-House Team
This advice may sound odd, perhaps even controversial. Many PR firms may be tempted to outsource email marketing tasks to freelancers or agencies. Nowadays, some of them will just invest in an AI assistant for budget-friendly email marketing. And it might work fine. But an in-house team can and will save you money. That’s because they’re more likely to understand your audience and keep your email marketing aligned with your specific PR goals.
With the right professionals in place, you’ll be able to get it right from step one. For instance, an external agency might use the simplest or most popular email software. Whereas your own team will prioritize tools with features that cater to your unique workflow, such as segmented outreach or media follow-ups.
A dedicated team could also ensure effective segmentation and personalization, customizing each email to the recipient’s interests and behavioral patterns.
And then there are your lead magnets. In PR, lead magnets like whitepapers or reports are must-haves to drive engagement. Outsourcing them to a freelancer or agency can be quite expensive. But your team could produce them at a lower cost and have better control over the messaging.
When dedicated professionals create different types of content in-house, ranging from eBooks to webinars and video marketing, you can use and repurpose it in multiple channels—not only emails.
Another important factor to consider is that PR campaigns often require real-time tweaks based on audience responses and data. An in-house team is readily available to adjust messaging or timing looking at email analytics, media coverage, or audience feedback—for example in the case of a PR crisis. That way, your communications stay timely, targeted, and cost-effective since on such occasions time is money.
Think of it as a long-term investment that may seem costly now but will bring back significant ROI. Providing recipients with educational and entertaining content will establish you as a niche authority and your audience will keep coming back for more of your valuable tips.
Foster Meaningful Connections with Budget-Friendly PR Email Campaigns
Cutting off expenses isn’t just about following the practical tips outlined in many guides—this one included. It’s about building strong connections with the people on your list. Investing in reinforcing your reputation through email will result in better brand awareness, increased deliverability, and positive media coverage.
But email marketing is an ongoing process, so you should nurture subscribers in the long-term. To do so, you need constant performance monitoring and optimization.
Key email metrics like clicks, conversions, and ROI help you guide budget allocation to get the best results possible. But you can learn from failed campaigns, too. Based on real-time reporting and historical data, you’ll be able to focus only on those emails demonstrating results. By investing in this process, you can achieve email success even on budget constraints.
