Lisa sells unique and not so unique pet items: from food to water bowls. She also runs a kennel. She houses all breeds of dogs for short and long periods of time. She’s been in business for a while, which allowed her to open a second kennel across town. Both kennels hold 25 pups, and until recently her kennels were always booked
Lisa has an online store including a reservation portal for customers to reserve a date and time to board their pup. Her email system is used to verify bookings and send reminders. She also collects email addresses at the register and uses these to announce any changes in the store or kennel.
With things in the world going the way they are, her kennels are temporally closed. Lisa finds she needs another source of income and is not sure where to turn
She may have overlooked one of the greatest asset she has: her email list. Over 10,000 addresses strong, with list members that have specific interests (dogs) and needs (pet supplies). They all subscribed to her list willingly. In one way or another, they know her brand. They trust her and the information she is emailing to them.
She needs to monetize her mailing list!
Because she’s been so busy, Lisa only sends one or two messages every so often about the kennel and changing store hours. But now, since she has the time, she’s decided to create a newsletter, with articles that will be interesting to dog owners. As she writes her first article, she decides to add specials and discount deals. In other words, promote her store online. She’s offering free information and if the content is good, it will get shared. This newsletter will build up her web visitors and sales
Lisa found a way to monetize her email list.
You can do the same by:
- Encourage people to subscribe to your list: Only offer discounts to opted in list subscribers.
- Gathering information from each mailing. Pay attention to your email statistics. Ascertain which type of content is read, shared or reread. Which articles and/or discounts drive people to your online store
- Finding sponsors. Depending on the number of opt-in members you have, you may be able to get sponsors for your list. In Lisa’s case, a dog food brand may pay to advertise to the 10,000 fully dog invested subscriber group. Or perhaps there’s a local business that will be interested in sponsorship, such as a homemade dog biscuit company.
- Offer a place for a vendor to contribute to your newsletter for a fee. This works well when you have a large list with targets audience with high engagement
- Increase your one-line sales with cross-selling. Lisa does this with autoresponders and email triggers. When a customer buys a grooming brush from her online store, they are sent a thank you email with a coupon to buy water-less shampoo.
- Collecting demographics and create list segments that focus on specific products and services that only a certain group of people would be interested in
- Offer a low-cost yearly membership that has great content and discounts only available to those subscribers.
- Rent your list to others that have complementary products or services available, like a dog washing station. Include an introduction so the readers know this is guest post or newsletter.
And read our blog to find out about Subject Lines, Shopping Cart Abandonment, graphic use in email, best days to mail, how to measure ROI. And so much more.
When you monetize your list it may take time to get the results you want. Have some fun with it. Focus on the relationship with your readers and the rest will come.
