Are you wondering how to monetize email lists or what an email ad server does? The email ad server is here to help you leverage a mostly untapped channel of advertising, and that is email advertising.
Seeing that email has long been established as the de-facto highest-converting channel, marketers have always wondered why we can’t utilize ads inside emails the way we do with other channels. This is where the modern email ad server comes in.
What is an email ad
The email ad is the equivalent to the ads you see on websites, or even traditional magazines and newspapers. It is essentially where an advertiser purchases space on a web page, magazine page, or a mobile app.
The publisher lets the advertiser place something in this space in return for some sort of a monetization scheme. For all intents and purposes, the advertiser usually utilizes this space to place a well designed graphical ad that calls to action of some sort.
The email ad is essentially a display ad, and it allows the advertiser to tap into a severely underutilized channel full of engaged and ready-to-buy audiences. The email publisher in turn gets to monetize their hard work by simply lending space in an email that’s already crafted for sending as it is.
It’s not just about putting ads inside of an email
You could always just manually put ads inside your newsletter by modifying the html code, so what’s the big deal here? If that’s all an ad server does, it’s next to useless. The idea is that it has to allow you to do in a manner that taps into what makes email powerful in the first place – relevance.
The reason email has unheard of conversion rates is because subscribers become loyal to a newsletter or brand, and develop a sort of a relationship of trust with the email sender. When email marketing is done right, it should feel as if an authority figure is helping you solve your problems, one-on-one.
The issue was how do you monetize your newsletter with other people’s ads and still maintain that relevance? Obviously placing random out of context ads would backfire. Until specialized ad email servers the only solution was to manually manage your ad inventory, and manually decide which ads would fit emails sent to which lists and segments.
Benefits to using an advanced email server
An advanced email server is one that offers several benefits to both publishers and advertisers. The main ones include:
- Letting advertisers tap into the benefits of email without building lists
- Simplifying monetization for publishers
In essence, the main challenge with email monetization has always been twofold. Namely that finding the clients themselves can be a drain on your time and effort. And secondly, that even when you do get the clients, placing the ads in the right way can become a big effort.
Your job is to ensure that the ads are relevant. However, if you do all of this manually, it can get super-complicated. It might involve having to create endless variations of emails to make sure the right ads show to the right people. Why not just let an ad server do all of this for you?
Choosing the right ad server
By this point you’re probably convinced that you need to allow an ad server make your life easier. But here’s the catch, not all ad servers accomplish this. There is actually a mismatch between why ad servers were created and whether solutions out there manage to achieve said goal.
If it isn’t easy to use, it’s not going to make your life any better
Unfortunately, most ad servers don’t meet the goal of making your life easier or being any better than doing everything on your own, manually.
If you’re going to put your trust into an ad server, it has to offer several benefits, with the main one being ease-of-use. You want an ad server that’s essentially self-explanatory and makes using it feel effortless and simple.
It should offer both a marketplace, and a private option
An ability to place relevant ads isn’t a distinguishing feature, it is the bare minimum for an ad server to carry that name. If you really want one that puts monetization (or advertising) on autopilot, you’ll want one that includes a marketplace.
This means that you can simply set what you need, and let it automatically handle things for you. If you’re a publisher, you want it to automatically pick the right advertisers (and ads) for you. And then you want it to charge those advertisers, and deliver you the earnings.
And if you’re an advertiser, you want to choose how you want to advertise and only pay for results. This is crucial, if an ad server charges on any model other than pay-per-click, run as fast as you can.
And then finally, if you are a publisher who already has advertisers knocking on your doors and offering money for your space, you’ll want a private marketplace option. This is where you can essentially add your clients on the advertiser side. Then, simply let the platform charge the clients per result. This ensures that both sides are satisfied.
A pay per click model is the best for all sides concerned. It gives you the publisher the right incentives, and it gives the advertiser long-term satisfaction. This means they are likely to stay around as an advertiser for as long as they have something to advertise.
And finally, it even gives the platform the incentive to make the matching and relevance algorithms as good as possible. When you tie the earnings to the actual results, everyone benefits.
Good tracking and reporting are a must
Just like with anything else in business, you only get better results with things that you can track and measure. This however doesn’t mean that all reporting options are equal.
At AdMailr we went out of our way to make sure the reporting feature fits like a glove. It hits that perfect balance between power and simplicity. This means that you will find yourself using this feature more often than not. And in turn, this is likely to end up in massive improvements in your end results.
A proprietary and automated matching algorithm is your best bet
Not every ad server goes out of its way to build a precise algorithm. You want to see an algorithm that matches the right ads to the right people. Unfortunately, most ad servers are quite simple in how they match ads. This essentially defeats the main purpose of using an advanced ad server.
This is different from AdMailr where we utilize patent-pending personalization and matching technology. Our sophisticated data algorithms and matching technologies make sure you get results. The ads are served in a way that maximizes relevance, and hence clicks. This satisfies both advertiser and publisher.
Give AdMailr a try today
The good news is that if you’re an advertiser, getting started is quick. All you have to do is signup for an AdMailr account for free. Just visit this page and choose “advertiser”.
If you’re a publisher looking to start monetizing your newsletter, setup is quick and easy. Just visit the signup page, choose the publisher, and then follow the instructions.
On the other hand, if you are a popular publisher with plenty of monetization offers, consider the private marketplace option. This is where you can use our ad server technology to quickly and easily manage your own ads and clients. Read more about that here.
