Newsletter Placements Offer an Exciting New Way to Promote your Brand
September is here and with it the end of Q3 looms over the heads of many brand marketers. A wise marketing guru once told us "Live the last month of Q3 as if it were already Q4" and let us tell you, she was absolutely right. We covered the ways that you can take early action to prepare yourself for increasing inventory costs in Q4, but you shouldn’t stop there. Taking the next 30 days to reinforce your digital marketing strategy with new avenues of potential revenue will ensure you have some extra time to get those methods dialed in just right. This will allow you to start Q4 while putting your strongest foot forward.
One area you should be considering, if you aren't already doing so, is newsletter advertising. In the last couple of years, newsletters have entered a golden renaissance and the consideration publishers are giving to what they send out to their subscribers has quickly established this as a great place to unlock new and exclusive content
The good news about modern day newsletter advertising is you are no longer obligated to purchase a space that is placed in front of 100% of its readership. You are able to apply the same focused targeting and campaign optimizations here that you have come to expect with other aspects of your FieldTest campaigns.
With that in mind, let's look at three reasons why newsletter advertising should be top of mind during the most fruitful time of the year for engaging with customers both new and old.
1. Email opens and CTR's are skyrocketing right now
Since the start of the year, market researchers have noted a steady increase in marketing email open rates CTR’s. This means more people reading, engaging and clicking through marketing emails than ever before. Some analysts point to COVID having a part to play with this, with the two prevailing theories being that the content we are consuming in newsletters has shifted to a more informative and educational nature coupled with the fact that working from home makes us feel slightly less frantic than when in an office environment and this leads to a more focused and measured approach to our Inboxes.
Certainly there's some truth to that, but also consider the content that many publishers reserve for their emails continues to be top of the line and creative in ways that the .com format doesn't always lend itself to. For example, some of us might find ourselves reading a longer form email all the way through where we’d normally skim that same piece of content if it's placed within the framework of a website.
Whatever the reason, the net effect to you and your marketing efforts is a positive one. One of the top companies in the space reported that many newsletters have seen as high as a 34% increase in opens and up to a 46% increase in banner clicks since March of this year . If we were to tell you that a specific website had reported that type of performance increase, you can bet that that lucky publisher would immediately sell out of all available ad inventory for the foreseeable future.
2. First party data (without sacrificing customer privacy)
Purchasing ads in newsletters gives you access to that all powerful first party data without digging around into all of the personal details that start to creep your potential customers out.
To explain the power of first party data a little more, one of the biggest reasons why some brands find Facebook marketing so effective is because Facebook leverages the first party data they are collecting from their users. Because you login with an email, ads that run through the social media ecosystem have a head start on targeting when compared to using third party data.
By comparison, third party data is anonymous as to the individual it's placing an ad in front of. Meaning, I can't specifically target an ad to my neighbor Bill, but I can target an audience segment of nameless, faceless internet users who all share a common interest.
Ads purchased within emails bridge the gap between these two worlds. The way they do this is through ‘hashed emails’ (read more on that here). This allows us to harness the power of first party data without the infringement on privacy that many consumers feel first party data exposes them to.
3. Locate the audience within your audience
Generally speaking, advertisers usually target their ads towards specific audience targeting or they focus on advertising within specific pieces of content to engage with people interested in certain topics. Rarely is it an easy task to find the right audience by implementing both strategies simultaneously.
FieldTest currently offers access to over 12,000 active newsletters (and growing) across verticals like News, Politics, Business, Shopping, Entertainment, Parenting, Food & Drink, Health & Fitness, Finance, Real Estate, Sports, Fashion and more. This means we’re able to locate your end customer and do it in a manner where we can also understand the contextual environment where we are finding them. This offers valuable additional insights into ways to strengthen your marketing as you continue to spend within the email environment.
With the year continuing to pass by before our eyes and holiday season fast approaching, now is the time to reach out into new and exciting avenues of marketing outreach. Our access to newsletter inventory, like our access to publisher inventory, is unmatched. Don’t wait to start promoting your business!