These days, consumers have become extremely skeptical of marketers and marketing campaign, resulting in many traditional venues losing their credibility along with their effectiveness as monetization channels. One channel that managed to retain its effectiveness is email, or to be more specific – newsletters, by virtue of the medium being largely permission-based. If you’re tired of losing a lot of time and money on traditional online channels like pop up and banner ads and want to try your luck on monetizing a newsletter, here are a few key points that you need to remember:
Always Be Relevant
The main reason why banners and pop up ads no longer work these days is because of lack of one key thing: Relevance. Regardless of how good an offer is or how gorgeous the design of the ad is, it’s going to be fighting an uphill battle if delivered through banner or pop up ads because it’s no longer relevant to the interests of the person browsing the site.
People who browse the site are usually there for the content, not the product or service that pop up ads hawk. There are edge cases where the banner ads manage to target the right person, but they’re so rare that it’s usually not worth all the effort or won’t let the advertiser and content publisher break even unless they increase the volume of everything by a significant margin.
So if you want to monetize your newsletter, you have to prioritize relevance. The fact that newsletter subscribers are expecting the emails you’re sending them already gives you the advantage, so don’t waste it by pumping out uninteresting or irrelevant content.
Maintain the Quality of Your List
A newsletter’s lifeblood is your list. If you have a poor quality list, you won’t make any money and you may even run into trouble with ISPs after being marked as a spammer. If you have a good quality list, you can bet that you’ll be enjoying a nice ROI as it ensures that you can build a rapport with the subscribers.
As for maintaining the quality of your list, the first thing you need to do is ensure that you’re only building a list through organic means – either through your own opt-in page or through an opt-in page that a third party has built specifically for you. Don’t buy from any random seller as the contacts on the list they are saying didn’t sign up for your newsletter, and will probably not appreciate receiving your mails.
Additionally, you should schedule regular pruning of the list, so that you can remove inactive or non-working email accounts in order to prevent bounces. Lastly, do not forget to honor unsubscribe requests. If you keep sending mails to people who have already opted-out, chances are they’re just going to block you and report you as a spammer.
Don’t Neglect Design
As a marketer by nature, one should never underestimate the power of a good design. You may think it prudent to do the designs and layout yourself, thinking that hiring a professional designer is tantamount to wasteful spending – but you could be losing out on a huge chunk of potential sales and repeat purchases because your self-made design turns off customers. In most cases, a professionally designed newsletter will end up paying for itself in the long run. Just make sure you find a designer who is familiar with the industry and understands the complexities of rendering email through various different email clients.
Lastly, Don’t Forget Mobile
These days, the number of people who use mobile devices to read mails has already exceeded the number of those who are still using a desktop PC, by a large margin. It would be foolish to ignore mobile devices when designing your newsletter, so make sure you have them covered before launching a new newsletter. Pay attention to the differences between mobile and desktop, and how they can affect readability and ease of use between devices. For instance, scrolling back and forth in mobile can be cumbersome due to the small screens, so you need to ensure that the email layout isn’t too large and that no image will stretch the screen in ways that would require the user to scroll left to right just to see something in full.
