The From Line

Sending, Managing & Monetizing Email

Should You Create a Mobile App? The Publisher’s Checklist

Should You Create a Mobile App? The Publisher’s Checklist

The world has gone mobile-crazy. (And with the advent of Pokemon Go, the craziness is clearly visible.)

Publishers want to catch them too.

No, not Pokemon. Mobile users. And the weapon of choice has been mobile apps.

How hard could it be? Develop an app, get your readers to download it, and you’ll be enshrined on their homescreens, beckoning them tantalizingly to open and read. Captive audience, anyone?

Except, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Many good publishers have gone that route, and eventually withdrew their mobile apps.

How about you? Should YOUR publishing company build a mobile app? If you can answer yes to the following 5 questions, you may have a shot at success. If not - better to invest the resources in your mobile website

Continue reading
  19836 Hits

Infographic: When Is An Ad Native?

Click To Enlarge

About This Infographic:

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.  

 

Use This Graphic for FREE on Your Site!

You may use the infographic above on your website, however, the license we grant to you requires that you properly and correctly attribute the work to us with a link back to our website by using the following embed code.

 


href="/images/easyblog_articles/368/b2ap3_thumbnail_native-scale.png" target=" "_blank">img src="/imaes/easyblog_articles/368/b2ap3_thumbnail_native-scale.png" alt=" "infographic" width="430" />

Click to Enlarge

Via Gold Lasso, Subscriber Engagement & Monetization Systems

 

Infographic Thumbnail

Continue reading
  8272 Hits

Email Monetization's Secret Formula: D.A.R.T.

Email Monetization's Secret Formula: D.A.R.T.

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!

Continue reading
  6972 Hits

Publishers' Missed Opportunities With Mobile Email Have Wider Consequences

Publishers' Missed Opportunities With Mobile Email Have Wider Consequences

I'm a news junkie! I admit it! I can't get enough news and analysis on Middle East conflicts, stock market trends, sports picks, and celebrity gossip. I almost always have two news channels running simultaneously in my house and at my desk at work. To continually feed my habit every waking hour, I subscribe to no fewer than 137 daily email newsletters, from big-name publishers to small niche bloggers, and I scan almost all of them on my four-inch iPhone 5s screen.

In general, my daily email newsletter habit saves me a lot of time. It's quicker than jumping from app-to-app or site-to-site to satisfy my fix. However, at times I get frustrated and stumble from the routine of using my right thumb to scroll down and click.

This frustration usually happens when I encounter a mobile-unfriendly newsletter, forcing my left index finger and thumb to start pinching and stretching across my iPhone's screen. My eyes dilate to discern the extra small fonts, while my genetically oversized thumb has to switch from a vertical to a horizontal scroll.

After I get a taste of the initial snippet of an interesting story, my desire to indulge in the rest takes over my brain. I use my thumb to forcefully scroll right, then left, frantically searching for the "read more" link or button, finally seeing the little blue words seducing me into action. As I take a deep breath to lift my thumb, I subconsciously notice the edge of a social media sharing image positioned nanometers from my objective. My thumb hits the screen, and a cold feeling immediately overcomes me with the thought that I missed. Sure enough, my Facebook app opens, with a prompt to share the story I that I'd just wanted to finish reading. "Crap!" I say. After repeating this narrative between 50 and 60 times daily, I've started being more selective with the publishers I interact with.

The phenomenon of online media not accommodating mobile email is not isolated to a small percentage of the industry, nor to a segment of its respective demographics. It's a systemic issue that's a disservice to publishers' subscribers and brand. In an era of fragmented audiences and shortened attention spans, publishers can't afford to marginalize the power of mobile email by ignoring responsive design. More importantly, publishers' lackadaisical interest in mobile email is counterproductive to their cries of low CPM rates and quality traffic.

When I ask publishers why they don't embrace responsive design, their answers range from technical ignorance to outdated design ideology. Whichever their answers, most fit in the confines of a flimsy excuse and are akin to shooting one's self in the foot, purposely!

Fortunately, adopting responsive design is easy, and can be fully integrated into a publisher's repertoire of daily email. The publishers who do eventually make the responsive design jump notice a substantial increase in engagement and monetization. It's not unheard of for open rates to increase by 20% or 30%, and CPMs to reach up to $8 or more for standard display ads alone. Given these tangible benefits, it's baffling why publishers aren't there yet.

The economics of a widely used, open platform like email are such that when there's an issue with functionality, the market rushes in to correct it. Uniform rendering across disparate email clients is a byproduct of trying to fix broken HTML. Publishers should expect similar efforts from developers trying to dictate subscriber experience to their email clients.

Continue reading
  12340 Hits

Monetizing Email Post Click

Monetizing Email Post Click

As published in MediaPost

Email newsletter monetization

When publishers think about email newsletter monetization, the first things that come to mind are usually list rentals, sponsorships, and display ads. While these typical pre-click monetization tactics work well, they often have inherent risks such as subscriber disengagement, list attrition and deliverability issues.

What if there was a more elegant way to monetize email? While most publishers focus on the real estate inside an email for monetization opportunities, they often overlook the most valuable parcels containing complete subscriber attention: the post-click.

Email post-click monetization

Every experienced publisher knows that the actual value of email is not in the opens, but in the clicks. The open statistic is just a prelude to the end goal of focusing a subscriber's attention to valuable content and revenue-producing advertising. Knowing this, nothing is more attention-grabbing than the anticipation of what's on the other side of a click. A quick shot of dopamine commits the subscriber to focus intently on what will happen next. This prime email real estate, the process of going from email to website, the post-click, is what gets squandered the most when publishers monetize email.

Thankfully, there are now targeting methods allowing publishers to monetize this neglected post-click real estate efficiently, without sacrificing list attrition or subscriber engagement. One recent email monetization study by Gold Lasso concluded that most pre-click tactics provide a 2 to 7 times increase in subscriber attrition or disengagement, while post-click tactics have no effect.

Ironically, many of these post-click methods are the same as pre-click (inside the email) but are repurposed for the post-click opportunity. The most prevalent example is leveraging an email address's MD5# or encrypted version. Aside from email marketing, the email address is now serving a multitude of purposes such as creating custom audiences on social networks and providing new revenue opportunities for publishers. Many ad networks now allow publishers to submit an email address's MD5# (instead of a cookie) to return a dynamically created personalized ad. Meaning, everything that you once did inside your email, you can now do outside your email, including video targeting.

Measuring the value of these new email monetization tactics is relatively easy. Basic CPM, CPC, and click-through rates will suffice. Most important, there are no opportunity costs, since most publishers fail to take advantage of email post-click opportunities to begin with.

Measuring the risk associated with these tactics is different. Raw email statistics such as opens, clicks and opt-outs are important, but applying a new combination of ratios can reveal a more telling story. The first new statistic publishers need to be mindful of is the open to click-through rate: that is, the total or unique clicks divided by the total or unique opens (clicks/total opens). If subscribers are conditioned to know they will see an interstitial or targeted ad unit, and are vehemently opposed to the practice, they won't click an email link. If this happens this statistic will fall precipitously, resulting in lower email engagement.

The second statistic is the click to opt-out rate, calculated by dividing the number of opt-outs by the total or unique clicks. If this statistic rises after implementing a post-click monetization program, the increase signifies greater than normal list attrition. To get a better understanding of your program's risk, it is best to compare these statistics to both before and after its implementation.

Despite some initial reservations by publishers, almost all realized that post-click email monetization programs provide new revenue opportunities with minimal risk.

Continue reading
  12758 Hits