5 Ways to Monetize Email Newsletters

It may not be as exciting as social media or content marketing, but email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach an intended customer.

In fact, digital marketers have stated that email is the most effective digital marketing channel when it comes to customer retention.

Email is also effective at achieving brand awareness, customer acquisition, and conversion.

When you also consider that, by 2016, there will be approximately 4.3 billion email accounts, you quickly realize that email is a channel that marketers, business owners, and bloggers can not ignore.  

But, what if you do not sell a direct product or service. Could you actually make money from your current email newsletter? That would be a sweet additional bonus for all of your hard work.

And, here are 5 ways that you can easily accomplish that.

1. Target Your Audience With Launchbit

Launchbit was launched in 2011 by childhood friends Elizabeth Yin and Jennifer Chin to modernize email advertising.

Instead of sending out the same mass email, Launchbit tailors emails to specific targets. In a way, it’s very similar to Google AdWords. You create you the ad, select your audience, and set the the cost-per-click (CPC) price budget that you want.

Not only does this assist you with bringing in qualified leads at a reasonable price, Launchbit also provides statistics for your campaigns so that you know which publishers are performing best. The platform also integrates with Mailchimp to make your life easier.

This 500 Startups alum was acquired by BuySellAds in 2014, but business has gone on as usual.

2. Work With Affiliates Using VigLink

According to a study by Forrester Consulting, on behalf of Rakuten LinkShare, it’s expected that marketers will spend almost $4.5 billion on affiliate marketing. If that’s the case, then wouldn’t it make sense to team-up with a company like VigLink?

VigLink was founded in 2009 by Oliver Roup and is basically word-of-mouth marketing, but at a larger, digital scale. The company finds mentions of commercial products within an influencer’s content, connects them to the brands, and offers to monetize these mentions through affiliate links in emails.

When someone clicks on that hyperlink in your newsletter and makes a purchase, you’ll get paid a commission. With an advertiser network of more than 40,000 brands and merchants, VigLink can be an effective way to make a little extra money.

3. Re-target Your Customers

Did you know that only 2 percent of website traffic completes a purchase?

What happens to the other 98 percent?

It’s lost. That’s why re-targeting has become a popular and efficient marketing tactic.

If you’re unfamiliar with re-targeting, it’s just a friendly of a product or website that you visited. You’ve probably noticed that when you go to a site like Amazon looking for a polo shirt. You’ll keep seeing that polo shirt as you keep surfing online.

Instead of losing those potential customers, use a service like AdRoll or Meteora, who happens to be a newer player since it was founded in 2014, to bring those customers back.

Not only can you follow your audience across the Web and social networks like Facebook, you can also send your target audience discounts, coupon leads, or loyalty rewards by placing a nifty conversion capture widget in your email newsletter.

4. Charge a Subscription

If you happen to be an expert in your field, which hopefully you are, then it makes sense for you to charge others for your knowledge.

In fact, many companies that offer services are creating free content like e-books to illustrate their knowledge and expertise. While that may sound a little pretentious, that’s how many authority figures make a decent living.

Here’s how it basically works; you provide your subscribers something of value, such as guides, tutorials, or video classes. You may only give them a taste of this content and offer the rest of the premium content for either a monthly or yearly fee.

For example, if you’re a fantasy football expert, you could send your subscribers your top 10 player rankings which details why they’re worthy of your draft selection. To receive the complete and exclusive list, however, your potential customer would have to purchase the paid newsletter subscription.

5. Sell Your Ad Space

If you have a large following, it may not be the difficult to sell valuable ad space in your newsletter, like directly above the header section of the email body.

You could even place a sponsored by ad underneath your newsletter title. Quartz’s Daily Brief is one example of a brand that does technique. Even though banner ads may not be the most effective — they don’t bring in a lot of money and subscribers may ignore them — advertising is a proven and longstanding method of making a couple of extra bucks.

If you don’t have a large following, or don’t want to sell your ad space, you could use your newsletters real estate to promote your own featured product or service. You could use a service like Canva to make your own banner ads if you don’t have the technical skills to do so.

How do you monetize your email newsletters?

Image: Launchbit

This article, "5 Ways to Monetize Email Newsletters" was first published on Small Business Trends