An email list can do more than just drive traffic to a website. This can be a source of advertising revenue if it makes sense for your brand.
Factors to consider include:
- list size, The number of engaged customers relative to your niche is important to potential advertisers.
- Solid metrics and sending history. Some of the most lucrative lists have high open and click rates, with unsubscribe and abuse complaints.
- useful material, Brands that provide customers with useful content — not just products or services for sale — are attractive to advertisers.
- Risk vs Reward. Advertising may prompt unsubscription and complaints. Knowing the annual sales value of a single email subscriber will help determine whether advertising revenue exceeds sales from unsubscribing.
to start
Supplement brands are potential advertisers. For example, a merchant selling camping gear may sell email ads to a recreational-vehicle rental company. The merchant’s customers will be a valuable audience for the rental company, which may pay to send the merchant a dedicated email or insert a message into the merchant’s existing newsletter template.
A merchant that sells travel gear may consider selling a dedicated email to Airbnb, a complementary brand.
It often takes time to entice an advertiser. In addition, an advertiser can terminate the relationship if the results are low.
Email ad networks like AtWave are a source of potential advertisers. Networks are similar to affiliate marketing platforms – both match publishers with advertisers.
Another source is programmatic intermediary-type services, such as LiveIntent. They offer a one-time tag to insert into your email template. They then dynamically insert ads, eliminating the need to directly sell space and communicate with advertisers on copy, presence, and so on.
LiveIntent dynamically inserted a Sephora from patch to email newsletter.
paid newsletters
Finally, if your site provides valuable, hard-to-find content, people may pay to subscribe to an email newsletter. We’ve addressed this option in “How to set up a paid newsletter.”
