Email marketing: what it is and how to implement it

 How to make money on email newsletters. Tips for beginners

How to make money on email newsletters.

How to organize earnings on email newsletters? Is this method of communication useful for business and how effective is it? Let's find out! Many users will subscribe only to receive the promised reward for free, and immediately unsubscribe from your profitable offers.

Some customers will be dissatisfied with the content or its design and will also say goodbye to you. But does this make email marketing weak and ineffective, or can you still make money on newsletters? Consider this question in our article!

Email Marketing Basics

Speaking about the effectiveness of this type of communication, you need to consider that the influx of potential customers from social networks is lower. More often, the user will simply ignore the advertising message, while the email will be stored in the mailbox, and the user will be able to open it at any time. Email marketing can be the most cost-effective investment in marketing. Another question is how to achieve such results. 

Send subscribers dull spam and hope for a chance? Bad idea. So you will only scare off your target audience, and spend a lot of effort, money, and time. Spam can cause your domain to be blocked. So still, how to make money on newsletters? The point is to send profitable offers to an already formed customer base. Simply put, you gather users with similar interests and give them interesting and useful content. 

In the general canvas, weave an excuse to purchase a product that will bring a personal income, useful knowledge, positive emotions (the necessary to emphasize), etc. And wait for feedback. Interested customers will be enough. But for such an email newsletter to bring income, you need to be prepared, and we will help you with this.

What you can sell

Choosing a topic is the most important stage. Earnings on email newsletters will bring the most obvious topics:

• parenthood and children;
• care and beauty;
• monetization of skills and increased revenues;
• sex, relationships, and love;
• sports, health, and proper nutrition.

With proper organization and in any other niche, you can achieve excellent results and income. At your disposal is a large selection of goods and services. You can narrow down your chosen industry to your own product. Try yourself in different areas, somewhere it will definitely "shoot". Develop the direction that you like more, and earnings on email newsletters will not be long in the coming.

Possible income

Monetizing subscriber bases in a newsletter is the main goal of email marketing. The more followers you have, the higher the revenue. But you should consider where this audience came from, and how it got to you. 

If these subscribers got into the database from your branded site, they are already interested in your product. Such an audience is called a "hot base". This target audience will spend money more willingly. If the subscriber-only got into the database with targeted or contextual advertising, then such a database is called "cold". 

The customer knows "just nothing" about your brand. You will have to work hard and earn his trust. An equal number of "hot" and "cold" subscribers will give a different amount of income. And in the first case, the conversion rate will be much higher, and such mailing to increase sales will be more effective. There is an additional factor of a failed advertising campaign. 

This is when the "hot" base for some reason stops working and brings money. That's because these clients did not receive letters systematically. If you have compiled a database but decided to postpone the start of the company for six months to a year, then you can be sure that half of the customers will not even remember you. 

For some subscribers, the newsletter will no longer be relevant, and other customers will solve their problems without your help. There is only one way out of this situation – to allow people to unsubscribe and live peacefully. 

You will not receive earnings on email newsletters from these subscribers, you will only waste the budget and anger the person with unnecessary letters. You can only benefit from YOUR audience. To do this, from time to time you should clean the customer base. 

Feel free to remove subscribers who have not opened your emails for more than two months. To carry out the hygiene of the subscriber base, use special services and software to check the email for validity. Another situation is when you have collected a customer base, but have not yet sold them anything. 

Such an audience is called "raw". With such subscribers, first, you need to work without paid offers. Create interesting and useful content. And after a couple of emails, you can offer paid services. The user gets used to you and will be ready to order a product or service. Remember the basic rule - the audience needs to be "warmed up". And only then offer their services. 

Let's calculate what theoretical income can be obtained from sending letters to the "warm base". What will be the earnings on email newsletters?

1. According to statistics, out of 1000 subscribers, your letter will be opened by an average of 250 users. This means that the open rate parameter will be equal to 25%.
2. Of these 250 users, about 50 people will click on the link.
3. And only five will perform the target action - order a product or service. The conversion from transitions to orders will be 10%.

As a result, the conversion from the total number of subscribers to buyers (CR) will be equal to 0.5%. For example, if you sell cosmetics for $ 20 per unit, then for five sales you can earn $ 100. You can effectively increase your own income by simply replenishing your customer base. Now let's talk about tools for email marketing, increasing repeat sales, collecting contact information, and solving other business goals.

How to Choose a Service Provider for Email Marketing

It is worth figuring out why such services are needed at all. You can send out all the emails from your own email, but will your efforts pay off in this case? When sending emails from a personal mailbox, it is worth remembering the chain of pitfalls hiding behind independence:

• With a high probability, your newsletter will get into spam, or the subscriber will not receive the message at all.
• Statistics of opening, clickability, and complaints about letters will not be available.
• You will not know who unsubscribed from further messages, which will cause an additional wave of getting into the "Spam" folder.
• If you are not a graphic designer, then a beautiful and elegant template for letters will also cause certain difficulties.

Therefore, the optimal solution for owners of large customer bases will be a special service. Now we will figure out how to choose it correctly for the needs of a certain business, whether it is expanding the customer base, increasing repeated sales, etc. 

First, you need to understand what you want from the service, and what functions and "chips" you will need. You should not rely solely on the price. You should clearly understand which tools and functions you will need, and which will be superfluous. Organizing an email newsletter is a rather time-consuming process, but these efforts are worth the result. When choosing a service, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is the interface convenient and understandable enough? If you can easily guess which button is used for what, then you have a high-quality program. You won't overwhelm the needs of a marketing campaign if you don't know how to use the tool for mailing.

2. Is there training? No one will like to feel helpless. And it is this feeling that will arise if you do not understand what to do with the opportunities provided. Therefore, when you are sold a "fishing rod", make sure that you understand how to tie a hook to it and plant bait.

3. Is there a trial version? How to understand whether this product is suitable for making money on mailing lists if it cannot even be visually "touched"? Find out about the possibility of the test period of the service, so that later you do not regret the money spent.

4. The ability to pull up your own contact base. Some services allow you to send letters only to the addresses from which consent was obtained to receive emails. If the database you collected was not obtained through an online subscription form, then not every program will allow you to integrate such a list of contacts.

5. Visual HTML editor, the ability to embed your own code. It is unpleasant when you purchase a program, in the hope of quickly earning money on mailings, and in the end, you also have to pay separately to the layout designer. The ability to visually edit will simplify your life. It is enough to upload beautiful photos, compose an inviting text, add links and send them to potential customers.

6. List segmentation. Check the possibility of grouping contacts according to various criteria. Including city, age, gender, etc. A marketing company without focusing on a specific target audience will have a better chance of failure. If you send information to people from one city, and the database also contains contacts of people from another place of residence, then you will not earn on mailings but will spend extra money.

7. Send email on a schedule or trigger. One of the most enjoyable features of the assistant is the ability to set up sending emails in advance. When you have a huge list of contacts, but you want to send a congratulatory letter in honor of your birthday with a personal discount, then such functionality will become a real "lifesaver".

8. Check for spam. The main enemy of the sender is spam filters. Identifying content spam helps to avoid IP blocking and increases the level of delivery of messages.

Options for earning with the help of e-mail

Turning your own customer base into revenue is not only possible but also necessary. Unfortunately, not all senders do this respectably and legally. The level of earnings depends on the method of obtaining a list of contacts. Customer bases can be divided into two types depending on the method by which this information was collected:

1. Clean base. These are the contacts of people who have subscribed to the newsletter, agreeing to receive a certain kind of content. This list is constantly cleared of outdated email addresses and contacts of those users who have unsubscribed on their own.
2. Dirty base. Senders sometimes neglect the ethical rules of marketers and acquire ready-made databases. Such lists contain the data of people who did not agree to the newsletter and are not waiting for your letters.

The ways to make money on email newsletters for these two cases are identical. But in the first case, with an equal number of subscribers, the level of income will be much higher. Like address databases, earning methods can be divided into white (legal) and black (illegal).

White ways to make money

Every business can combine different ways to monetize a contact list, but the main emphasis should still be on legality. Let's look at legal ways to make money on email newsletters.

Affiliate Programs

You can promote links to the business partner's branded website or to your own project in your newsletter, where links with your companion's products or tools are already located. For example, you are the organizer of ski tours. Manufacturers of ski equipment and related products can receive good earnings on your advertising mailing list. You just need to choose several suppliers and offer them your services. If you want to interact with large firms, then keep in mind that they are ready to pay for cooperation in the case when your subscriber base has at least 10,000 users, and the click-through rate is more than 20%.

Advertising Sales

There are two options for making money on email newsletters:

• sale of space in letters;
• selling the ability to send emails on your behalf.

If you're giving a third party the right to send messages on your behalf, be sure they won't send spam or prohibited content. It's not just your money that's at stake here, but also your company's reputation. Just a few letters will be able to destroy what has been built for months and years. "Tip: So that a potential advertiser can learn about you, tell about your product as much and as often as possible. Post information about cooperation on your corporate website in a separate block. You can also use exchanges to place information for potential partners."

Advertising of information products

Information is perhaps the best-selling commodity in the world. Everyone wants to acquire useful knowledge, skills, and something inaccessible to other minds. For example, if you have a series of educational content for different niches, then you can make money on newsletters advertising this content. 

Also, a great example of a newsletter is situational information products. For example, the pandemic has changed everyone's life. Sending instructions with a clear step-by-step plan of action, in this case, will be a good move. If you sell tours to different countries, then it is a good idea to notify potential travelers in which countries and regions you can spend the weekend without having a vaccination certificate. 

It is not necessary to create your own information products, you can place a third-party source in the newsletter, the main thing is to take a fee for this and agree with the source on such placement. Now let's talk about how to make money on mailings that do not quite fit into the framework of what is allowed.

Black methods of earning on email newsletters

The methods of "white sale" are quite suitable for the "black". The only difference is that such mailing is carried out on a merged customer base. The income from such emails will be much lower, but it also has a place to be. 

Such a mailing ー is a story about sending spam. If the contact database is bought and potential recipients have not given their consent to receive emails, you can still try your luck. Also, unfair earnings will be the trade-in customer bases. 

But the proceeds from such activities will be significant. Often, mobile operators sell their contact lists to different businesses. The database is huge, segmented by city, username, age, and gender. The cost of such a base can vary between 0.5-50 rubles per subscriber. It all depends on the "freshness" of the database (how long the contacts were collected) and its niche. 

The sphere of commerce is valued much higher than the sphere of entertainment services. But remember that this method is unethical and illegal. You sell people's personal data without their consent. An additional unpleasant factor will be the fact that you, earning on mailings, doom the subscriber to receive various spam.

Types of newsletters

Different types of messages can be sent from one list of clients. In your arsenal of congratulatory letters, discounts and promotions, individual letters, and advertising of new products. Consider the main types of emails, and how you can make money on such mailings:

Selling newsletter

The task of such an email is to get income. Letters that indirectly or explicitly sell something are called selling. This can be an alert about discounts and promotions, coupons for additional products, etc. 

Individual and newsletters

The purpose of these emails is to provide the user with timely and relevant content. In such letters, you can send articles from your own blog, training videos, and other useful information. Such letters do not sell anything, they only give knowledge. 

Individual mailing is a bit like an informational one but can include an offer of promotions and discounts. For example, a coupon for the second free unit of goods on the birthday of the client or on the anniversary of his subscription. This is also a great way to make money on email newsletters. 

Trigger mailings

These are emails that contain an interaction anchor. For the user to receive such an email, certain conditions must be created. For example, the client independently on the company's website left a consultation request. In this case, you can set up automatic sending of an email, in which you briefly introduce the user to the course of business. The trigger can be any user action: from subscribing to the site, ending to the situation when the user added products to the site's cart but did not make a purchase.

How to organize an electronic newsletter

To conduct a marketing campaign, you must go through certain preparatory stages. Start by gathering your customer base. Next, select the subject of the newsletter, and make a plan for sending emails.

Types of client bases and how to gain a subscriber base

There are two types of databases:

• Cold.
• Hot.

In the first case, you should introduce yourself to readers, as these are new, newly collected contacts. The second case is that these are native customers. They no longer need to talk about the company, its products, and its advantages. It is easiest to work with such an audience, it is enough to send offers with seasonal discounts and promotions, congratulations on holidays, and individual offers.

 This audience is already yours, do not forget to maintain contact with it and then you will definitely be able to earn on your mailings. But what if there is no base at all? How do you recruit customers if you're just setting up your business? Now we will analyze everything in detail.

 If you do not have a customer base at all, then you can make a landing page and collect contact information with its help. Set up targeted advertising, customers themselves will leave information, and you will only have to send them your own profitable offer.

 Another option is to buy a database of contacts from a similar business. Keep in mind that this audience did not give their consent to receive your messages. You may encounter emails being spammed and your email domain is blocked.

 The method is not the best, but it is effective. Do not forget only to check such a database for the validity of addresses and the presence of spam traps. Also, to quickly start earning on mailings, you can use specialized services and software. The way out of this situation will be a program for collecting a database of email addresses.

 It will help in a few clicks to find the target audience for the selected niche. All that remains to be done is to introduce new customers to their brand. If you already have a list of customers, then proceed to the next step (setting up automatic emails).

Automatic and individual mailing

Set up automatic sending of individual and trigger mailings to customers.

• Welcome-email. After subscribing to the site, the user receives a welcome letter containing a brief excursion.
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• Communication support. After placing an order, you can send the user information about the status of the purchase (track tracking of the shipment, receipt department, arrival date, start time of the course, etc.)
• Congratulations on the holidays. Including individual celebrations and regular holidays, such as Valentine's Day. In the first case, you can set up sending messages with congratulations on a birthday or wedding day (if there is such information). In the second case, you need to segment the database by age, gender, and preferences, and send relevant offers for each individual group on a suitable holiday.
• Congratulations on the anniversary. Celebrate a round date with the client. For example, the anniversary of subscribing to the company's website. Offer free shipping or a discount. The client will receive a unique offer, and you are a good reason to remind yourself and the opportunity to increase repeat sales.

Now let's take another step toward our audience. Consider what and how you can send to subscribers.

How to create content for the newsletter

Collecting contact information is not the most difficult task in an email newsletter. It's much harder to retain a customer. To do this, you will have to work hard and constantly create suitable content. Choose a strategy for preparing suitable content:

• Unique content.
• Messages are based on data from the site.
• Generated content.

In the case of unique content, you create the information field yourself. Such a mailing is good because the recipient will be as interested in it as possible. After all, this data is exclusively in your letter. Of the main disadvantages is a time-consuming, complex process.

 Starting with the choice of an interesting topic, and ending with the time spent. It is easier to make a newsletter based on the information located on your site. For example, if you have your own blog, you can select the key points from the article and submit them to the subscriber in the form of a checklist. 

The generated content usually includes data from third-party resources. For example, financial intermediaries such as Forex collect index value data from various sites, and the user receives structured and easy-to-understand information about the derivatives and securities market.

 The user himself could find this data on the internet, but the sender took care of the convenience of subscribers so that they could absorb the key points and effectively trade on the exchanges.

How, when, and how much to send emails

Keeping in touch with your followers is pretty important. But do not overdo it with your presence in the user's life. To make money on the newsletter and not to cause negative emotions in the subscriber, such a newsletter should include useful and interesting information.

 Normal is considered to be no more than 2-3 letters per week. Send congratulations on holidays, profitable seasonal offers, and personal discounts (for birthdays). Excessive intrusiveness is not appropriate.

How to interact with your target audience

It is worth being guided by the principle that "an old friend is better than a new two". Retaining followers is not as easy as it may seem at first glance. For the client to stay with you, follow the proven rules:

• Follow the unsubscribes of users. Carry out hygiene of the customer base, if the user does not want to receive your emails, then it is better not to hold them.
• Regularity of mailing. Send messages at regular intervals. Once a month is not enough.
• Mention the following interesting letter. Allow the customer to be interested in your messages. Mention that he will find even more useful and interesting information in the new letter.
• Feedback. Ask the person to share their impressions. You can give some interesting tasks to involve the user.
• Relevant information. Let's give useful information that is easy to put into practice.
• Do not get carried away with the advertising component.

Conclusion

You can earn on almost any mailing list. Approach this task comprehensively, determine the newsletter's subject, and affiliate conditions, choose an effective service for online marketing, and go for it! A friendly team of the ePochta service will be happy to help you with this.