What Could You Do With An Extra $2-10 Million? Use These Ideas To Monetize Your Email List - Bshani Radio App

By: Cheryl Conner Here’s a path to new revenue you potentially didn’t know you were missing. Most every company maintains an email list of customers and followers. It’s the way you let them know about product updates or coming events. Maybe you send an occasional business tip or newsletter as well.

But here are some additional ideas from speaker, author and radio host Bennie Randall, Jr., from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. From an early life that was riddled with hardships he progressed to a career in the music industry as a dancer, “hype man” and rapper. As he gained an increasing level of comfort in front of any size crowd, he decided each his own life hardships—losing a sister, two brothers, his first-born child and father, were meant to teach him a lesson. He moved to Brooklyn, NY and began to share his stories with others, speaking to businesses ranging from small teams to Fortune 500 organizations. He wrote “The Motivation Factor” and developed two best-selling audio books, producing more than $2 million in sales.
Next came a successful private online community, BennieOnDemand.com, and two digital radio stations, BshaniRadio.com and VercayRadio.com.
In all of these ventures, however, one of his most notable achievements that he is able to share with others is the importance of monetizing your email list. Since everyone has or can easily develop a mailing list of their own, he’s shared with me a few of his favorite strategies for leveraging your list for additional revenue and customer engagement. So regardless of your current email marketing strategy, he advises you to keep these tips in mind:

• Organize your email subscriber group into sub categories. This allows you to not only maintain an awareness of your follower base, but also gives you the flexibility to tailor offers to the various groups you know will have a higher likelihood of engaging in a particular send, thereby increasing your overall open rate and, in turn, your return on investment per send.
• Hook recipients with your subject line. In a sea of emails, take the time to make sure yours stands out in an authentic and informative way. Have the message people can’t resist opening for at least a cursory look.
• Don’t buy your list. As tempting as it is to develop your base in this way, you stand to lose more than you gain in the long run by relaying on purchased lists. Not only does a purchased list disengage you from your audience, but in the current climate of heightened concern about personal privacy and GDPR regulations, this strategy may reflect poorly on your business, and by extension on you.

So now that your list is organized, organically grown and pristine, you are ready to monetize it further by considering these ideas:

1. Drive Interest in Content Accessible via a Private Community Enrollment or Subscription. Even with the wealth of information through the world wide web, people are willing to pay for information they believe to be credible and unique to their personal interest and situation. Centralize your most valuable bits of information, be it in video, print, or audio format, and put them behind a pay wall. Use your email access to entice readers to return to your site time and again by teasing out links to access content they’ve explicitly expressed interest in.
2. Build out Your Social Media Community. In addition to building on site traffic, take the opportunity to expand your social community as well with easily shareable content. Allow people the chance to engage with the greater community and to maintain a rapport with your brand.
3. Promote Your Products. As consumers hop from task to task, they now hop just as readily from screen to screen and device to device. Whether it’s a voice activated assistant, smart phone, tablet, laptop, or traditional television set, there is truth to the claim your business has to be in all places at all times. As you build out your digital and physical products, use your email list to promote these new ventures. Keep in mind that your subscribers will likely be the first to try your new products. Find ways to draw them in (freebies, contests with product giveaways and first dibs offer, etc.) and encourage them organically to advocate for your products, which allows you to make revenue in several ways.
4. Create Opportunities to Engage in Real Life.While our lives continue to become more heavily reliant on digital technology, do not underestimate the impact that experiential marketing can have on your business. Use your email list to draw your subscribers into intimate workshops, conferences, and other events that your business intends to participate in. Invite them to also invite others to get to know, interact, and build trust with your brand.
5. Create Partnership Opportunities with Other Vendors and Publications. As your list grows, think about what kind of cross promotional opportunities you can engage in with other brands or publications that would help increase your subscriber base or bring your products to a new and engaged group of individuals. Alternatively, offer to either sell ad banners and native promotional slots within your emails or to create dedicated promotional sends for a partner at a pre-agreed cost per send. Note, however, that promotional specific emails should be considered as a part of your overall email communication strategy, to maintain balance by giving your subscribers valuable opportunities instead of inundating them with messages that may ultimately lead them to disengage.

The strategies have been extremely successful for Randall. His online community, BennieOnDemand.com, has garnered more then 40,000 paid subscribers in the past three years. You can use your favorite of his ideas to begin building and monetizing your own readers and subscribers into new streams of revenue, too.

Bshani Radio News