Have you been using popups and other optin forms to grow your email list? Do you want to start monetizing it immediately?
Building an email list is an integral part of a business’s success. But there’s more to it than merely collecting leads and storing them in your database. Your email list is a gold mine waiting to be discovered and utilized. The issue of monetizing your email list without scaring off the subscribers can be quite a dicey topic – especially since you cannot follow a “one-size-fits-all” approach to appeal to all subscribers.
Here, we present a few ideas on how you can make money with your email list without losing audience:
1. Promote Affiliate Products
Here’s why affiliate marketing works – you can find and promote a wealth of products and services that align with your business niche. Plus, nearly 4 out of 5 brands rely on affiliate marketing to advertise their products and register more sales. In essence, affiliate marketing strikes the perfect demand-supply balance to lay the foundation of a successful monetization technique.
The premise for affiliate promotion is fairly simple – you proposition products or services that can enhance the receiver’s quality of life and you make a small commission per sale. As stated previously, your recommendation should be in line with the interests of your target audience. Once the recipients notice the immediate value in what you offer, your affiliate marketing plan will be a roaring success.
If you recommend wrong or low-quality products, they will unsubscribe from your list and never buy from you again. They might even tell their friends and followers about it.
2. Create Information Products
When you have put in all these efforts into building your email list, you can take one step further and develop an in-house product or service to go with it. But what can be this product or service that will appeal to a bunch of receivers without worrying you about the production, cost overheads, and the logistics? The answer is simple – information.
Your email newsletter can be an excellent source of information specific to the interests of the people on your mailing list. In the current time and age, information is a precious resource, more so if it comes from a credible source. And the fact that you have an email list to prove your authority on the subject matter, puts you in a position where you are good to go.
All you need is a set of interested parties and a robust content strategy to engage them. From that point onwards you can sell inputs on the stock market or entertain your readers with stick cartoons. Remember, the core idea is to maintain content quality while dividing all the information into helpful, self-sufficient modules.
Make sure that the products you sell are relevant to the information you provide in your emails and the lead magnet you get them to sign up for. For example, if you use a professional email example template or drag and drop free designed templates as lead magnets, you can promote premium templates in the email.
3. Launch a Consulting Business
If the idea of curating an entire information-based content series feels like a lot of work, then you can always work on a case-to-case basis. This is where consultation enters the picture.
Through a consulting business, you no longer have to offer generic advice to a broad set of customers and can settle for offering one-on-one assistance in your subject domain. Plus, you will be redirecting all your resources and expertise towards those who pay for it, which will allow you to personalize the service and earn a proportionate reimbursement. Plus, you can earn solid referrals and testimonials by going by the personalization route.
And while the concept of launching a consulting business sounds rather attractive, you need to discover sustainable ways to maintain scalability as your business grows and matures. As the demands for your services increase, you will have to devise ways to satisfy this demand without compromising on your service quality.
One way to ensure you offer quality services while you scale is by using digital marketing services or a lead generate service and a project manager. The marketing experts will help you get clients and the project manager can manage clients and you and your team can focus on servicing clients. Just make sure you measure your ROI. As you need to generate a healthy profit.
If using a service is too expensive you can take advantage of automation tools such as appointment schedulers, ad automation software, email marketing tools, etc. This will work out much cheaper.
4. Start a Paid Newsletter
Paid newsletters offer subscribers access to exclusive content and resources. They hit the sweet spot between information products and consulting business when you are non-committal to either monetization possibilities. With a paid newsletter, you have a little wiggle room for personalizing your content, quite unlike an online course. At the same time, you will serve a larger audience, which will address scalability issues. In essence, it works out to be a mid-tier offering where you can appeal to a wider audience through member-exclusive content.
Depending on the value that you offer, you can charge a flat-rate lifetime subscription fee or accept recurring payments on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. Offering this level of flexibility grants the subscriber to pick as per their requirements.
If you go down this path, make sure you share your best information. Your content should be better than the stuff shared by any of your competitors. Also, pay attention to the email newsletter’s design. It should appear extremely professional.
5. Sell Ads in Your Newsletter
When it comes to making money quickly, advertisements are one of the tried and tested techniques that will help you achieve your goals. However, in the age of digital clutter and noise, nobody likes to be the target of ads. Plus, different ads carry varying weightage in terms of applicability and ability to generate revenue. So if you are aiming for high revenue with a low unsubscribe rate, you will have to get really creative here.
To make your ad spot attractive to advertisers, you need to have a minimum of 2,000 segmented subscribers, above-average open rates and CTR, and engaging content. These three qualities set the premise for the efficient usage of advertisements within emails. Moreover, the segmented mailing list will allow you to run highly effective and targeted campaigns to maximize profits.
6. Team Up With Influencers
Social media influencers are known for their extended reach and domain expertise. They have a large following and can be a hotspot for useful leads and information. So how about teaming up with them to enhance your email list and gaining their aid to monetize it?
Of course, the first line of business would be to identify an influencer who aligns with your brand niche, voice, and objectives. You can then approach them for partnership and outline a clearly defined strategy for sharing the benefits that you reap through this collaboration.
Alternatively, you can also use your email list to promote their products and services or request them to do the same for you. Such an initiative will offer mutual exposure, which can help you leverage other forms of email list monetization opportunities.
Concluding Thoughts
There are multiple ways to monetize your email list and build it along the way. There are dozens of other techniques such as running an ecommerce store that I didn’t include here. So, make sure you look them up too.
Do keep a close eye on the receivers’ preferences and how they respond to your campaigns. Such metrics will lend insights into the success of your initiatives and you can focus on what works for you. Eventually, you need to think from a subscriber’s point of view and how to benefit them; only then will you sow the seeds of your email list growth!