How to Make Money With Your Email House List
Enterprising marketers want to know: Can you do more with your email house list than just send email?
Is it possible to safeguard and nurture precious online customer relationships while simultaneously addressing a pragmatic need for increased revenue?
The short answer is yes--but it requires care. You must understand the nature of email as a relationship tool before you try to monetize it.
People give you their email address because they want to hear from you--not the company you have sold, rented or allowed to advertise to your list members. So if you elect to expose your email recipients to the advertising messages of others, be sure they are messages your recipients would want to receive.
With that in mind, here are some ways you can monetize your email house list:
Drive traffic to your Web site or retail location
The simplest and best way to monetize your email house list is to drive traffic to your Web site or retail location. You encourage visits to your Web site by providing quality email and e-newsletter content that addresses customers' interests, answers questions and solves problems. Ask yourself what your customers care about, and provide information around consuming it. For example, if you’re a popular music store, you could also talk about stereo equipment, iPods and trends in music. Or if you're a restaurant, you could tell the story behind a popular new menu item, or offer a recipe patrons could try at home.
To drive customers to your retail location, you can create email coupon codes that recipients can use to receive in-store discounts or rewards. Or better yet, instruct them to bring in a computer printout of your email in order to redeem your special offer.
Co-brand your list
Co-branded list rental is a technique in which a list owner accepts a fee in exchange for sending recipients an email message on behalf of another company. For example, an online gourmet foods business might introduce a new specialty coffee retailer to the members of its email list, inviting them to visit the coffee seller’s Web site, or to take advantage of a unique promotion or discount. The list owner earns a nice fee, recipients get an interesting and relevant message, and the list renter gains access to a pool of potential new customers. The key is that the advertiser's message is clearly coming from you--they trust you and will open messages from your brand. Choose your co-branded partners carefully since, as the list owner, you essentially are vouching for them to your customers.
Accept advertising in your e-newsletter
The hardest part about doing an email newsletter well is coming up with a stream of unique, relevant things to say. If you can achieve that, and provided you have a big enough list to interest potential advertisers—10,000 addresses or more--you could monetize your e-newsletter by accepting paid advertising. Choose only advertisers whose products and services are relevant to your recipients. Be aware that if you have a relatively small list of 5,000 addresses or fewer, you may have difficulty finding someone to purchase advertising space for such a limited number of impressions.
Sell your list
While Silverpop generally doesn't recommend it, you can rent or sell your list. Most smaller businesses don't have a large enough list to make a lot of money by selling it. But if you have an unusually large list, or the nature of your business allows you to capture email addresses of a unique, valued niche audience, then this may be an appropriate option worth looking into. Before you decide however, keep in mind that today's consumers are less tolerant than ever about receiving unsolicited email. If they realize you’ve sold their name to someone they don't want to hear from, they may cease doing business with you altogether.
Finally, be creative
Think about all the perfectly crafted, beautiful, permission email messages you receive and delete every day without reading. The medium itself gets you nothing--it’s what you do with it that counts. If you’re sending out generic e-newsletters, or random specials-of-the-day, you’re missing a great opportunity to really understand and connect with your customers.
For instance, instead of a generic e-newsletter, you could instigate an imaginative viral communication. For example, a retailer could send recipients a unique number and inform them that, if five people make a purchase using that number, they will win a prize, or earn a discount on their next purchase. The more you think about email as a unique medium that requires creativity and relevance every single time you send a message, the more value you'll reap.
In the end, a successful email house list is more about marketing than the medium. Before you blast out your next message, spend an extra 10 minutes putting yourself in your recipients’ shoes. Imagine what they are most interested in, and what message they’d most enjoy getting. Then send them that one. Ultimately that’s the best way to make money from your email house list.
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How To Make Money With Your Email House List
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