The From Line
Sending, Managing & Monetizing Email
Online marketing authorities Murray Newlands and John Rampton recently teamed up on “Performance Marketing for Professionals,” a brand new eBook that focuses on how to get started and become successful in this rapidly evolving industry. “Performance Marketing for Professionals“ details topics ranging from affiliate marketing, to media buying, to SEO, offering hands-on industry experience and expert insights from Newlands and Rampton, plus a handful of other Internet marketing leaders.
Throughout it’s 14 chapters, “Performance Marketing for Professionals” offers great advice on becoming an affiliate, crafting successful email campaigns, and designing landing pages, making it a great resource for novice Internet marketers. However, this book is not just a newbie’s guide, as it also offers in-depth coverage of and expert tips on Facebook ad buying, Google and Bing PPC campaigns, and competitive intelligence. So, whether you are just starting out and are looking for a textbook to help get you started, or you an experienced digital marketer who is looking for some new ideas, “Performance Marketing for Professionals” is a great place to find all the information you need.
As we read through the book, one of our favorite chapters had to be the one focused on email marketing. It’s a comprehensive chapter on the subject that not only walks you through the steps of what a great email campaign needs, but it also offers some great insights into design and other factors that sometimes get overlooked.
“When people ask about making money with Email marketing, I have one simple answer, which is, send people what they want to receive,” the book explains. “You should know where they opted in and what they opted in for, so be sure to send them related things that they will like, click on, and sign up to use or purchase. If someone registers for a competition to win a vacation on your site, then send them more information about other people’s competitions to win a vacation. If they registered for a loan application, send them more finance related offers. If you blindly send irrelevant offers then there’s no value in your Emails. If you send good quality content in the form of a deal or a newsletter, customers may even send it on and help grow your list.“
From there the chapter delves into topics such as list development, co-registration, subject lines, deliverability, design, and more.
For all of this and much more, be sure to pick up Murray and John’s new book “Performance Marketing for Professionals” from their website—after all, where else can you get so much information for only $4?
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Urban consumers feel 13% stronger than suburban ones that making a purchase DOES NOT constitute permission to market to them on their mobile device. Likewise, Urban consumers also feel 25% more strongly than suburban ones that making a purchase DOES NOT constitute permission to market to them via email.
Lesson: marketers shouldn't mess with city folks texts and email - they'll be a lot less forgiving!
Source: Determining Perceptions of Marketing Permission Impact Marketing Success
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Maximizing the value of your content seems like another chore on your sites to do list, but the truth is, content monetization is absolutely critical if you want to increase your conversion rate and generate more leads.
Here are 3 content monetization tips to help your customer acquisition and conversion efforts get started on the right track.
Encourage User Participation
By encouraging users to give their opinion, you improve your monetization efforts in two distinct ways: User participation creates a much better overall experience for visitors browsing your website. Getting the opinions, experiences and perspectives from users will enrich and enhance whatever content you are providing. User participation creates more content for your site, also referred to as user-generated content. The upside to user-generated content is that it's of high quality and practically free.
For each of the key points above to be effective, you need to make sure blog comments are enabled and/or add a forum section to your website, where users can give their two cents and build relationships around the topics they’re passionate about.
Keep the Buying Decision in Mind
Content that talks about specific services, products, brands or merchants almost always monetizes better than content that does not. No matter the topic of your content, odds are there is a shopping decision closely related to it.
For example, a photographer who runs a blog may only post recent photographs and tips for taking better photographs, but does that mean they cannot monetize effectively? No way. Within these posts they have the chance to let the reader know the type of lens and camera they used for each photo, where they can then insert an affiliate link to buy that specific lens or camera.
Not only does this vastly improve your monetization efforts, it also creates a richer experience for the reader. Do not make the mistake of mentioning a helpful product, service, brand, merchant or software without having a way for the reader to find out more right then and there.
Increase Authenticity
In order to monetize effectively you absolutely must find the perfect balance between monetization and authenticity. Your users understand the need for monetization, but driving the nail too deep, so to speak, will only hinder your progress and repel your users.
Find the type of content that produces the most results, that gets the most response, and leads to the most conversions. Nine out of ten times informational content will trump commercial, and in the end will earn you the most revenue.
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Marketers often get sidetracked in the day to day tasks of content marketing such as planning, writing, engaging and publishing that sometimes makes them forget the reason why they are doing it in the first place. The main goal of content marketing is to promote your business, receive more leads and make more sales.
Content monetization is an important part of this process. Below are some tips to make the most of your content monetization strategy and to help with your overall content marketing efforts.
Co-Registration & Native Advertising
With co-registration, marketers are able to monetize their content by trading their leads or content registrations using a permission-based process. Through this process, prospects and customers can opt in to receive information from brand-enhancing partners. The same holds true for native advertising, where contextually relevant information such as articles, infographics, and videos from brand-enhancing partners are embedded into newsletters, blogs, etc. This increases the overall experience and value for prospects and customers.
Video Monetization
Video monetization is a very popular form of targeted advertising. It is a great way for business owners and marketers to earn revenue from their content and is economical for advertisers ensuring them decent exposure to their advertisements. The most important rule of monetizing through video is to keep it natural. Slamming your audience with product promotion will not just turn them away from your content, but it certainly will not help the advertisers either. Be sure you are partnering up with brands that offer products that will fit easily with the content of your videos and will appeal to your visitors.
Delayed Selling Monetization
If people are reading your content regularly; they will be more likely to buy something from you in the future if you happen to promote a product or service that is interesting in your content. However, in order for this technique to work efficiently, regularly becomes challenging. Be sure you provide content that is high quality and offer people multiple ways to consume your content such as an email signup or an Atom or RSS feed. Make sure your email marketing tools allows you to easily perform split tests and list segmentation so you can optimize your sales efforts to your readers.
Mobile Monetization
People who use mobile devices are typically focused on a specific reason such as finding a restaurant and are usually time-constrained. If they aren’t instantly informed or engaged, they are quicker than desktop users to abandon their current path. Therefore, providing them with the right type of content that is exactly what they are interested in and are looking for referencing their location is essential. Understanding how your readers are using their mobile is vital too. One way to monetize mobile is to offer premium memberships to mobile content. Mobile users will pay a premium for convenience on the go. They react well to time-based offers and exclusive content. Lastly, always be sure you make your mobile content social.
For more information on content marketing and monetization, please contact us.
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If you're using content marketing nbsp;on a regular basis to promote your business, don't forget the importance of eye candy. If you've been relying solely on the written word perhaps it's time to explore the use of visuals. Consumers have limited time and easily digestible graphics can be just as effective as an article or whitepaper.
Here are some ideas to incorporate visuals into your content marketing strategy:
1. Create infographics. If you're not a professional graphic designer, then you'll need to outsource this step to someone who is experienced in graphic design (preferably in infographic design). The actual content of the infographic, however, is up to you. It should include information that others will find helpful and specific to your area of expertise. Your infographic should be structured in such a way that people can learn a lot in a few seconds by just glancing at it. Above all, it should reference your brand and website.
2. Use memes. Some business owners may need to divorce themselves from the "get these kids off my lawn" mentality that they have towards Internet memes. Memes are not just for teens with nothing to do. They're frequently used by adults and represent a significant slice of Internet culture. Feed off of that by using them in your own content.
3. Animated GIFs. Want to add some spice to your content so that it's a little more shareable? Don't neglect the use of animated GIFs. They're like videos, but the reader doesn't have to click "play". BuzzFeed has mastered the use of animated GIFs and now it's a household word. You can find plenty of animated GIFs which represent a particular mood by simply Googling the mood name, followed by the words "animated gif". Also, check out reactiongifs.com.
RegReady makes your content marketing go further by helping you find new cutomers. Join RegReady today and recoup the value you're losing from traditional content marketing efforts.
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