Better Ways to Make Money with Email

by Tim D'Avis Second Street

What’s the True Value of Your Email?

To start the conversation about monetizing email, you first need to know how valuable a single email subscriber is to your company. This is the Lifetime Value – or LTV – of your subscribers. Once you know the LTV, you can talk objectively about email and measure the impact of specific campaigns. Plus, this will provide an understanding of your acquisition and opt-out cost.

Determining your LTV may sound tricky, but we’ve put together an interactive LTV worksheet to help get you started.

Ideas for Email Revenue

When many companies think about revenue-driving emails, they take a large ad from an advertiser, place the entire image in an email, and send it out to their entire database – whether they wanted it or not.

Not only does this lack a clear call-to-action (or including far too many!) but you also harm your email strategy and your relationship with your subscribers. Looking for email revenue ideas? We’ve put together a few lists custom to your media type: radio, tv, newspapers, and magazines.

Package & Price Email Like a Pro

Now that you’ve got ideas of what to sell, you need to know how to sell. Access to your database is valuable, and you need to price accordingly. Building a great package is time consuming, and it can be a little daunting to figure out the starting price point. To make things easier, we’ve put together sample pricing guides for every media type: radio, tv, newspapers, and magazines.

Remember the ‘Golden Rules’

Sending an email on behalf of an advertiser can be a lucrative idea. However, while you set high standards for your content, you need to also set those high standards for your emails as well. Here are five key points to consider when you build out your next partner email.

  1. Be relevant. Segment your list by interest.
  2. Get permission. Ask people what they want to receive.
  3. Know your key segments to target for growth.
  4. Be engaging. Clean your list.
  5. Always use a compelling call-to-action in your emails.

Don’t undervalue your email program. Calculate your LTV, add some new (or improved) sponsorship opportunities, and use that knowledge to impact your email revenue strategy. But don’t forget that every single email affects your relationship with your subscribers. Figure out which new email ideas you can incorporate today.

 

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