One of the digital marketing strategies that hold the most potential is email monetization. It brings benefits to not only publishers but also to advertisers, as they can leverage email to reach more targeted audiences.

1. The Future of
Email Monetization
( Tactics Publishers Can Use to Overcome Challenges)

2. As 2020 draws to a close, digital publishers look toward the future to find
more effective tactics to overcome their challenges. Email is a strategic
tool for content publishers. Unlike search and social media, the content
gets into the hands of decision-makers.
One of the digital marketing strategies that hold the most potential is
email monetization. It brings benefits to not only publishers but also to
advertisers, as they can leverage email to reach more targeted audiences.
Let’s find out why the future of this emerging strategy is well worth
a closer examination.

3. What Is Email Monetization?
Email monetization is all the ways businesses and publishers can use email
to generate revenue from newsletters and other emails (e.g., transactional)
they send to their customers and prospects.
It includes a variety of strategies, some more effective than others, as
presented below.

4. Many brands look at email newsletters as a long-term marketing strategy.
Provide high-quality content, build your reputation in your industry, and,
eventually, many of your subscribers will become customers.
This strategy works well in the long run. When a business provides its
audience with information that can help them solve problems, become
more efficient, generate more money, and grow to dominate their industry,
it will grow in both trust and reputation over time. It becomes a thought
leader. However, it brings few short-term results.
What Are the Most Effective Ways to Monetize a Newsletter?

5. But there’s another option available to monetize your email list, used by
publishers from all over the world: selling advertising space within the body
of your newsletters.
This strategy delivers fast results. In addition, if done right, it can provide
one of the best sources of revenue for both publishers and marketers.
Adding programmatic native ads – which are ads that blend in with the
design of your newsletter, while using audience insights and advanced
targeted algorithms – you have access to an easy, yet powerful email
monetization tool.

6. Email Monetization Challenges Publishers Faced During
the COVID-19 Pandemic
Although the 2020 pandemic created a captive audience for digital
newsletters, the coronavirus produced its own set of challenges for
publishers. Two of these challenges will persist long after medical science
discovers vaccines and other management strategies for COVID-19.

7. 1. Generating Short-Term as well as Long-Term ROI
Those publishers who followed only the long-term revenue model, as
iZooto.com’s Ruchika Sharma points out, ran into trouble. She says,
“Marketing with no verifiable ROI…is now unacceptable. Result-driven
efforts are the ‘only thing’ to be focused on…” Advertisers who succeeded
with native ads shunned overly promotional copy, opting for engaging
stories that entertained even as they informed their readers.

8. Those who sought out “additional channels,” such as programmatic email
ads, added a sustainable source of income that CMOs could depend on.
Even during the height of the pandemic, native ads generated revenue for
publishers, so long as the content was relevant to the audience.

9. 2. GDPR Regulations and Other Privacy Laws
The EU, as well as several other countries and regions, have enacted
stringent privacy laws, such as the GDPR and the CCPA, to regulate
spam emails. Heavy fines, as well as other penalties, await those who
do not comply. It’s essential for newsletter publishers to partner with
digital advertising solutions that guard your recipients’ privacy as they
would their own.

10. Even with the rise of social media, email remains the most effective
channel for reaching your audience, engaging them with useful,
entertaining content, and converting them into customers.
In fact, email has proven itself to be resilient, evolving to meet each
challenge, as it has with privacy laws and generating immediate revenue.
Make sure that your ad software provider logs only the minimum amount
of data for the ads to work and encrypts any data that they do store to
protect you against penalties for violating these laws.
Email Industry Trends and Changes

11. Email is the perfect partner for your social media channels. As owned
content, your newsletter isn’t under the control of a third-party site.
Moreover, a business can publish content that reflects its brand’s
personality and values.

12. Besides, when you provide a share button on articles you link to in your
newsletter, your subscribers can share your articles on social media,
creating an even larger audience for your content.
Companies that include interactive elements, such as videos, GIFs,
and clickable ads, make email content more compelling, adding a
participatory, highly visual feature to the experience.
Programmatic ad partners add to that extended value by providing
links to products and services that are relevant to your recipients. Using
ads selected by advanced algorithms, you can deliver targeted and
relevant content, based on your subscribers’ preferences and interests.

13. Even more compelling is the potential of programmatic email advertising
to help a business leverage the power of an ecosystem model of doing
business. As Ibrahim Gokcen points out in his Forbes piece, businesses
that form partnerships across industries could “generate an estimated
30% of global corporate revenue by 2025.” By working with an email
monetization partner, companies can add email monetization to their
portfolio of services, bringing more value to their customers
The data alone that such partnerships can generate, along with the
increase in immediate revenue, can provide them with a strategy that
works in both the long and the short term.

14. Growing your email list organically should be your topmost priority. Grow
it by posting links to content that will help your target customers answer
their toughest questions. Or, incentivize current subscribers to refer
others, as did The Hustle, one of the world’s most successful newsletters.
Invest in Winning Email Strategies

15. Use storytelling techniques to craft your content. Taking your readers on
a “hero’s journey” in which they become the hero is an effective way to
draw them in. If you do use your product or service in the story, let it be
the “sword” that helps your reader conquer whatever life throws at them.
At the end of your article, place a call to action that asks readers to
subscribe to your newsletter. That way, you’ll only have subscribers who
are truly interested in what you offer.

16. Programmatic native ads are the least intrusive, yet most effective form
of monetizing your emails. They are chosen by AI to appeal to each of
your subscriber segments, so they’re a sustainable way to engage and
convert your recipients. Recipients interact with native advertising up to
60 percent more than display ads. If you include videos or other images,
they will convert as much as 60 percent more than text-only ads.
Why Should Publishers Consider Programmatic
Native Email Monetization?

17. It gets even better. Reading native ad headlines attracts 308 times the
attention as do images or banners. Moreover, over half of those who click
on your ads intend to purchase the product or service it advertises.

18. Find a Reliable Partner to Start Monetizing Your Email
Newsletters with Programmatic Native Ads
One of the most effective strategies in programmatic advertising is audience
targeting. Targeted audiences bring in more ROI, simply because only ads that
appeal to their interests appear within the emails you send them. If you partner
with a programmatic email monetization service like inboxAds, you can put the
power of programmatic in your own hands.

19. Working with five reputable ad inventory networks and years of
expertise, we’ve enabled a variety of publishers to generate revenue to
monetize their email newsletters.
We can do the same for your company. To learn more about putting
email monetization to work for you, get in touch with our inboxAds
team today.

20. If you enjoyed this slidekit,
please visit the inboxAds Blog
for more resources on
email monetization.