Content Monetization Through Email Marketing: Where to start and how to maximize

How does content drive revenue?

Too often, content gets overlooked because it may be challenging to connect the creation and distribution of it with revenue.

So, we decided to unpack that process to help you understand how it fits into your marketing and how you can use it to grow!

For eCommerce marketers and business owners, the buildup to and the holiday season can be rather intimidating. So much of this planning falls squarely on the email marketer, who is responsible for building anticipation, building a list, and converting that list when it matters most.

The strategy needed for e-commerce email marketers and businesses in this window is completely different than the strategy for the rest of the year.

Things can get a bit chaotic, and everyone is focused on how to maximize their email marketing during this season. And with the clock ticking until the holidays, there is no better time to start planning than now.

Needless to say, we’ve seen plenty of mistakes leading up to and during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, so we wanted to help you avoid them!

We laid out some of the most common holiday mistakes we see made in holiday email marketing strategy so that you may avoid them and give you a smooth roadmap to follow!

What we’ll cover:

1. How can you drive revenue through content?
2. Everyone knows they need to create content, but how exactly does that content drive revenue?
   1. Monetization of content through email marketing
3. SEO + Email is a 1+1= 4 Relationship
4. Takeaway – How do we drive revenue long-term?

This topic is near and dear to our hearts, and we get this question asked by many e-commerce businesses: 

• How do I monetize my content?
• How do my content emails generate revenue?
• Is content marketing worth it?
• How does content drive revenue across channels?

We answer these all the time, and we want to help you to understand how you can maximize the value of your existing content, understand what goes into that process, apply it to your business, and gradually see for yourself the benefits it has to offer. 

What is content monetization?

Content Monetization refers to driving revenue through the content you create and distribute through your owned, earned, and paid marketing channels.

Typically, eCommerce businesses work a lot to create more and more SEO-focused content and then drive some traffic through it because, in the end, everyone wants some return on investment.

Then, slowly and steadily, the site finally starts to build some momentum and authority as those articles keep adding value over time, and then finally, it gets ranked in the index, which brings in the organic traffic they all longed for.

In most cases, it takes around 4 to 12 months to reach that point, and not everyone has the luxury of that time.

However, we see that as one of the biggest opportunities for growth because it gives you that strong base of traffic to your site, as opposed to being completely reliant on Google or Facebook ads. 

Everyone knows they need to create content, but how exactly does that content drive revenue?

There are a few different ways I want to walk you through to have a better return on investment than you’d normally see through organic only. 

For example, imagine I have an eCommerce business that is established, but I have a new program to introduce. So starting from month zero, I’ll plan to post a blog post about in the first month, and it’ll take around 6 months to see some organic traffic coming in because Google takes its time. For some, it might take less time, but still, you can’t expect it to happen overnight.

So what can you do to see a faster ROI? 

This is where the email will come into play. It can not only help maximize but also maintain the revenue consistently over time.

Let’s see how it works:

Monetization of content through email marketing

1. Distribution to list

First of all, long before Google notices your post and ranks it in the index (which happens for some faster than others, as we discussed earlier), you can distribute it to the audience you already have. The ones that have already opted-in to receive content from you – your email subscribers!

Sharing with this list gives you an opportunity to add value beyond the transaction and creates an engaging and relevant touchpoint for you with your audience. For those businesses with well-established lists, this initial email may make $5k to $10k right away. So out of the gate you are ROI positive and the article hasn’t even had the chance to drive organic traffic.

This also helps in those retention efforts because you have a relevant reason to reach out to your audience without sacrificing margin through discounting. Another bad strategy we see over and over.

2. Automations

And then, if you’ve done well until now and are being smart about it, you should be taking that same content and incorporating it somewhere in your automations (Flows for the Klaviyo crew) also, particularly where it fits well contextually with your customer’s journey.

For example, if they’ve recently bought a pair of boots from you, and you have this article about ‘taking care of boots to make that leather last long,’ you can send it to them in any of those post-purchase sequences. The article adds value and helps them extend the use of the product they purchased. You’re helping them increase the longevity of the product they just spent their hard-earned money on. That’ll help you make a strong relationship with them and build the foundation to start your retention efforts.

Also, if you have another product to help with leather care, it can make a really good cross-sell right there! We always call this a “trojan horse” when it is incorporated thoughtfully.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to adding value to your audience and becoming that trusted advisor, as opposed to an e-commerce vending machine.

(No offense, though; it’s just how some businesses are)

So, because you have these three channels, the organic one, the distribution through the list/social media, and automations, you should be able to start connecting the dots between content and revenue.

This gives you more latitude to expand the work you are doing in content because you can see multiple ways that it drives revenue.

That means you get to introduce new content the next month and the month after that without worrying about your budget getting cut or priorities changing

If it all goes well, you’ll see an increment in your baseline revenue each month, and it’ll ideally keep compounding in the long run. 

We talk about automations as the 401k of your eCommerce revenue pie because it builds slowly, but as they generate consistent recurring revenue month after month it really adds up.

3. Social

You should also be distributing that content via social media; although you might not notice the same direct ROI as you did from email, it still adds value to your audience and gives them a direct channel from social to your site. And because not everyone in your audience will see it, you can likely recycle it much sooner. This adds to your overall return on investment. 

4. Recycling

Let’s say you’ve been developing content for a long time now (six months or maybe even a year); there might be some of it that your audience could’ve missed, so you can just circle back around and reach the audience that didn’t see it the first time, engage with them and offer them any complimentary products you have (related to their previous purchase or the piece of content you’re sharing) without being heavy-handed.

Don’t be shy about this. If you have a 30% open rate for your emails, that means it may have made it past 70% of your audience. And as you tweak and edit content over time it improves the information and makes it more relevant to the end user.

See, these are just some simple yet natural techniques to keep that revenue flow steady!

SEO + Email is a 1+1= 4 Relationship

I always joke about this that SEO and email are kind of like a one plus one equals four relationship because they both supplement each other so well.

If I’m good at SEO, a good email marketer is my best friend because they can help me justify that investment in SEO a lot better. 

Especially for an email marketer, it creates a chance to prove value to the audience beyond the transactions.

Don’t be too shortsighted in the way you engage with your audience because you should ideally be looking for chances to help them through that course of their customer journey, and the content is what will give you the chance to do that. 

Also, the content does not only need to be focused on SEO, basically anything that relates to the use case a bit more or anything that can help serve that audience in a unique way. Over time you’ll gradually become more valuable to your audience because you’ll have a better sense of what your audience likes and what it doesn’t.

This is also where the knowledge that you have being an expert in your field comes into play and drives that long-term value and revenue in the business.

How do we drive revenue long-term?

If we can produce more content, share more valuable ideas, help them use the product better or in novel ways or even help recommend items you don’t carry but are in a similar lane. And everything you share, you should learn from, so by spending more time creating and distributing content, we’re going to have a better understanding of what’s working and what is not.

That being said, you’ll be able to tweak and change things faster and faster, as well as invest more because we know we’re going to see faster return on investment and a consistent increase in revenue. 

So now you may be asking yourself: Where should I start?

1. High revenue generating categories

Focus on the content that supports your high revenue-generating categories early. Spend time analyzing content that you already have and creating more content on topics that constantly are high performers.

2. High value customers

By focusing on customers who have the highest lifetime value and make sure that you treat them like rockstars. 

You don’t want to starve your stallions and feed your ponies…

Meaning focusing on the high-impact areas of your business first before creating content about everything.

Takeaway – How do we drive revenue long-term?

Looking at this from the revenue perspective, it’s pretty simple to understand that if your content is driving more money, you have the leverage to excel even further. For instance, you can use that money to produce more content, understand what’s working and what’s not and make changes accordingly because you know it is eventually going to bring back some good ROI. 

This is one of those topics that is really close to our hearts, and we love talking about this stuff, so let us know and call me out about anything I missed here; we’d love to hear from you guys!

You may also like:

• Content Marketing: Where to Start and How to be Successful?
• Content Monetization Through Email: How much time and money you should invest
• How Much Revenue Should You Be Generating Through Email?