The From Line

According to to Litmus “Email Analytics”, 55% of all email is opened on mobile devices. It’s time for publishers to face the fact that information is being consumed more on the go, and email that is not designed for the mobile world first is doomed for failure.

User Experience
It’s all about the user experience. Understanding what is pleasing to the eye and attention-grabbing to subscribers is vital. There is a lot to be learned from the layout of the email design and how it is interpreted -- to ensure a second glance and not an immediate dump into the trash.

For starters, it’s imperative to create a responsive design that will optimize viewer traffic. We’re all familiar with responsive web design, and email is no stranger to this veneer. The methods to generate responsive email design are practically scientific. A effortless change of the font size, layout, adding padding, modifying color, navigation, scaling of images, hierarchy, and alteration of content can make all the difference. 

Last week we talked about the Email Monetization Model as a whole. Now, let's look at the three Types of Monetization. 

First, we've got Display Advertising, the most basic and easiest way to monetize your email newsletters. Display ads are based on IAB standards and advertisers usually have ad units ready to go. The two best IAB banner ad sizes for design and performance in email are 300x250 and 728x90. 

Successful email monetization is not an afterthought or separate function of email content development and operations. Maximizing email monetization is dependent on how well it’s integrated into your overall email newsletter strategy. With a well executed monetization strategy, your subscribers should view content and advertising equally.  In other words, your goal for email monetization should be for your subscribers to value advertising as much as they value your content.  This is obviously easier said than done.  However, with a few tricks and and quality effort, you can create a great inbox experience greatly evening subscriber optics of content vs. advertising.