Everyone knows that the key to any successful email program is subscriber engagement. The same goes for email monetization. The challenge lies in training your subscribers to engage, not just "skim" through your emails without any action. Ensuring your subscribers click is paramount to your monetization success. Subscribers should know exactly where to locate value quickly and click on it. 

When you do not provide constant and multiple ways to engage, you are leaving money on the table. There are four main components required to train your subscriber's to engage. It's easy to remember them, D.A.R.T. 

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.  

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Despite the fact that publishers and advertisers can agree on what native advertising is in its legacy print format, there’s still much confusion in the industry when native advertising transcends the digital space.  Gold Lasso believes the reason for this confusion stems from the sheer number of variables that can be manipulated in a digital ad.  To help publishers and advertisers wrap their heads around what defines a native ad, we developed this simple scale that takes into consideration both publisher and advertiser standards and characteristics.  The scale demonstrates that native ads are defined by the degree that advertisers relinquish creative and formatting control to the publisher.  Are some ads more native than others?  We think so.  

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I’m privy to a secret that I’m going to share with you. Publishers and media companies that are successful with their email programs don’t like to share this information for fear of passing on the opportunity for success. Personally, I feel there is enough success to go around and this is why I’m choosing to share it.

The secret is labeled “D.A.R.T.” and it directly affects their ability monetize their email newsletters.

D. Design:

A newsletter’s design is one of the main elements that determines a successful email monetization program.  Aside from mobile and multi-client rendering, advertising, both native and display, should FEEL part of the subscriber experience not relegated to the newsletter’s  margins.  Additionally, newsletters that include full stories instead of teasers are not conducive to monetization as an advertisement placed in these types of formats look awkward and out of place, disrupting the subscriber experience.

A. Amount:

If you plan to place one or two ads in your newsletter be prepared for very tepid results.  Effective monetization of a multi-story email newsletter requires the proper ad to content ratio which in some cases can be 50/50 or 60/40 depending on how well you’re able to integrate advertising into the subscriber experience.

R. Relevance:

To maximize revenue, it’s important to go beyond contextual ads and include personally targeted ads as well.  Ads targeted using a subscriber’s encrypted email address (MD5#) are usually based on a demographic and behavior profile by the advertiser or ad network helping to yield higher CPMs.  

P. Technology:

Advances in software automation and cloud computing has propelled mass email technology to new heights yet these advances have also democratized the channel where advanced features are now available to even the smallest publisher. The costs to automate email newsletter programs have dropped substantially. In fact, Gold Lasso offers FREE access and sending from its enterprise email software to highly qualified publishers. Now there is no excuse NOT to automate. 

So there you have it. Secret revealed. If you are a publisher or media company and you follow these four simple recommendations, you’ll be on your way to successful monetization!