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The Mailroom / The cost
One message, five prices
The cost: why the channel is also a budget decision
A message costs money on some channels and nothing on others, which is the reason a reader’s inbox looks the way it does. Sample H prices the fifty-message month channel by channel, and the widest gap in it is 1,550 times.
Desk spec
- channels priced
- 5
- messages
- 50
- month per account
- 1.3352
- all by post
- 31.00
the five kindsA receipt records something that already happened, marketing promotes something, a service note explains a state of the account, a security alert says something changed, and a legal notice is the message whose arrival is itself a step.
the two switchesOne stops marketing and nothing else - 12 of 50 messages on the samples. The other does not stop anything: it changes the channel the remaining 38 travel on, which changes how they arrive and what they prove.
the three countsSent is what the operator's log holds (50 of 50), arrived is what a delivery receipt shows (48 of 50), and read is what a read receipt shows (21 of 50). Three counts, routinely called one.
Direct answerPrices per message differ by channel: on the samples an email costs 0.0004, an in-app message and a push cost nothing, an SMS costs 0.0410 and a posted letter costs 0.6200. The fifty-message month therefore costs 1.3352 per account, and sending all fifty by post would cost 31.00 - 23.2 times as much.
The price list, and the month
The prices are per message; the count column is sample A's channel split, so the two multiply into the month's cost.
Sample H - the fifty-message month priced on five channels
| Channel | Price each | Sent | Cost | What it is used for |
|---|
| email | 0.0004 | 33 | 0.0132 | everything, including notices |
| in-app inbox | 0.0000 | 9 | 0.0000 | records inside the account |
| push | 0.0000 | 4 | 0.0000 | short alerts |
| SMS | 0.0410 | 2 | 0.0820 | one-time codes and urgent alerts |
| post | 0.6200 | 2 | 1.2400 | the two notices |
| five channels | 0.0000 to 0.6200 | 50 | 1.3352 | 93% of the cost sits in 8% of the messages |
sample H - the month, and the same month by post
33 email x 0.0004 = 0.0132
9 in-app x 0.0000 = 0.0000
4 push x 0.0000 = 0.0000
2 SMS x 0.0410 = 0.0820
2 post x 0.6200 = 1.2400
month total = 1.3352 per account
year total = 1.3352 x 12 = 16.0224 per account
per message = 1.3352 / 50 = 0.0267 average
all 50 by post = 50 x 0.6200 = 31.0000
31.0000 / 1.3352 = 23.2 times the mixed cost
and the four posted messages (SMS 2 + post 2) are 4 of 50 = 8% of
the volume carrying 1.3220 of the 1.3352 = 99.0% of the cost.
Why the important messages are the expensive ones
The price list explains an inbox pattern that otherwise looks like carelessness: the messages an operator is obliged to send are the ones that cost money, and the ones a reader would rather receive are the free ones.
sample H and A - cost against obligation
free channels (in-app, push) carry 13 of 50 = 26.0% of the volume
paid channels (email, SMS, post) carry 37 of 50 = 74.0%
of the 4 unswitchable kinds, the 2 that must reach a reader
outside the product (alerts, notices) travel on SMS or post
cost of the 4 messages that carry them = 0.0820 + 1.2400 = 1.3220
that is 99.0% of the month for 8.0% of the messages, and those
4 are the ones a reader would least want replaced by a free one.
The prices are invented sample figures, not quotes from any provider, and no provider or platform is named anywhere on this desk.
What the price list explains
Once the channel economics are visible, several inbox behaviours stop looking arbitrary, which is what makes the next page's omissions easier to predict.
- Expect the messages that cost nothing to be the ones sent most often and least read.
- Expect the messages that cost most to be the ones the account cannot do without.
- Treat a sudden increase in free-channel messages as a budget decision before assuming an event.
- Notice when a task that arrives on a paid channel is moved to a free one, because the evidence usually moves with it.
- Do not price the reader's time at zero: the reading gap is 41 minutes against a 0.9 second delivery.
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