Marika Zinca April 28, 2021 Getting your email monetization strategy right is an art and a science. With these email monetization tactics, you can create better content, engage subscribers, and increase revenue from newsletters.
Quality copy is the driving force behind better engagement. But how do you stand out and avoid the dreaded “spam” label? By creating content that subscribers actually want to receive and interact with.
The key is to produce content that people look forward to. But great content can be tricky, and it’s even trickier for email.
The good news is that by the time you’ve finished reading this article, you’ll know the secrets of creating more engaging content and learn the basics of email monetization.
We’ve found that content plays an essential role in email monetization – from copy to subject line, images, fonts, CTA, design, and including the copy and design of the ads you include in your newsletters.
This article is a great quick-start guide on how to use content to engage your email newsletter subscribers and fine-tune your delivery strategy in a way that drives more revenue. Each section will highlight your objective (what you want to achieve) and the tactics you can use to get it done.
Let’s get started.
Why Engagement Matters in Email Monetization
You don’t send newsletters for them to sit in an inbox – you send them to be opened, read, and clicked on.
Email engagement is defined by three email quality metrics: open rate, click-through rate (CTR), and unsubscribe rate.
Engagement is the key to creating quality content that gets results through an email monetization strategy. Here’s why:
- Email has an average ROI of $ 42 for each $ 1 spent. That’s a 4,200% return.
- 90% of content marketers say email engagement is the top metric they track to measure content performance.
- 70% of people want to learn about products through content rather than through traditional advertising.
It’s simple: if you have an engaged list, the value will come over time. And creating quality content for these more engaged audiences means a better opportunity for email monetization.
How to Create the Right Content to Engage Email Subscribers and Increase Revenue
Follow these tactics to grow a healthy, engaged list that actually makes you more money.
Start with the subject line
Objective: Create better subject lines that increase your open-rate and engagement.
Tactics:
- Personalize your emails – you can increase your open rate by over 22% by simply customizing your subject line with the recipient’s name, job title, or other relevant info.
- A/B test your subject line – experiment with different versions of your subject line. Try asking a question, creating a sense of urgency, keeping subject lines short, and using lower case. Then, segment lists with different types of subject lines to see which one performs better in terms of open rate and CTR.
Diversify the content
Objective: Make your email relevant to the recipient by focusing on providing value – you want to entertain, educate, or inform your readers.
Tactics:
- Try a variety of types of content – engage your subscribers with different formats of your content, like audio, video, or even PDF. Just including a video in your email can increase your click-through rate by 300% alone.
- Use social proof – give your readers a reason to trust you. Include customer testimonials, celebrity endorsements, and relevant numbers or statistics.
- Repurpose best performing content – think of blog articles, social media posts, endorsements that have performed well and use them in your newsletters.
- Invite industry thought leaders as a guest – invest in high-quality content that pays off.
- Offer gated content – tease content behind a paywall. Offer your readers infographics, e-books, or similar incentives in exchange for a fee or subscription.
- Ask for feedback – establish a line of communication with your readers. Even if they don’t reply, they’ll be 45% more likely to engage with what you send them next.
Let’s talk about design elements
Objective: give your subscribers the gift of convenience. Make your email newsletters easy to read and fun to interact with. Even small gestures can go a long way.
Tactics:
- Make your emails responsive – make sure your email can be viewed in different browsers and on various platforms like mobile phones, tablets, and desktop computers.
- Work on readability – highlight the crucial parts of the text and include a summary or a cheat sheet of your latest piece of content in the email.
- Optimize your images – choose images that work on high pixel density displays and compress them to improve loading time. You can also use templates, for consistency.
- Focus on the fonts – use web safe fonts and always test them before clicking the ‘Send’ button.
- Include social sharing – emails that include social sharing buttons have a 158% higher click-through rate. Even if your readers are not interested, they might forward the newsletter to a friend or colleague.
Bring attention to your CTA
Objective: Include a clear and focused CTA that subscribers will find almost impossible to resist, to stir and inspire action.
Tactics:
- Start with a clear goal in mind – why are you sending an email or newsletter? Stick to one goal per newsletter – you want your customers to buy, download, read, join, sign up, book or hire you for something, or any other conversion goal you have.
- Remove distractions – write email copy around the goal and include a call-out box, such as outlined or high-contrast buttons and eye-catching images.
- Keep it relevant – use calls to action that lead to more content that’s appropriate and engaging.
Sell advertising space into your newsletters
Objective: maximize revenue from your email newsletters.
Tactics:
- Try sponsored emails – include sending promotional messages on behalf of third-party sponsors that appear alongside your regular newsletter content. In sponsorship emails, brands pay you to include their logo and copy in your newsletter. They’ll get access to a highly engaged list of subscribers, while you increase revenue and benefit from social proof.
- Offer dedicated emails – rent out your valuable newsletter distribution list to promote a specific company’s service or product. Unlike sponsored emails, dedicated emails contain information about just one offer and are entirely devoted to an advertiser message. Make sure you only partner with brands that can make relevant offers to your audience.
- Use programmatic native ads – unlike sponsored or dedicated emails, programmatic native ads include links to related articles or products/services based on your audience preferences and their online behavior. These ads match the form, feel, and function of the newsletter on which they appear. Users are more than 2X as likely to click on a native ad vs. a traditional banner.
If you want to really boost your revenue, use programmatic buying to make your native ads even more relevant and clickable.
While native ads appear like headlines leading to related stories without disrupting the user experience, programmatic ads target the audience through algorithms that sift through data, such as demographics or interests.
Native ads are a great opportunity to increase revenue through newsletter content.
Here’s why:
- They drive up email engagement– native ads that are programmatically bought and placed are tailored to the user, which leads to more engagement and better ad performance. These ads leverage machine learning and contextual signals to provide your subscribers with a better, more seamless, and intuitive experience.
- They’re low in cost, yet high in returns – with zero costs for email publishers and up to 35% more revenue, programmatic native ads beat the cost of seeking out individual advertisers, negotiating contracts, and manually managing your ad process.
Keep in mind!
The more subscribers you have, the more chances of getting clicks.
The best way to see an increase in revenue is if you have significant lists of email subscribers. Check out these tips to grow your email list into a massive revenue builder.
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