The Takeaways:
- The newsletter categories that have reported the highest increases in revenue include shopping (103%), home and garden (55%), and business (31%).
- The ad revenue growth is fuelled by a rise in email opens and engagement since the stay-at-home orders began.
- Ad categories reporting the highest increases in performance include arts and entertainment with a 58% growth in CTR, business with a 51% growth and family, and parenting with a 450% increase.
What it means:
Email newsletters are proving to be a powerful marketing, revenue-generating, and engagement tool. This year’s Reuters Institute Digital News Report not only reported an increase in the production of email newsletters but also found that newsletters help grow audiences, build habits, and strengthen brand loyalty.
A previous Adobe Email Usage study in 2019 found that 60% of people in the US prefer to communicate with brands via email. Another study showed that for every $1 spent on email marketing, companies receive $42 in return. Better yet, this represents a 10% year-over-year growth for email ROI.
Implications for Monetisation:
The Morning Brew, a daily newsletter designed for young business professionals, is a shining example of the recent email newsletter successes. In just one year, the publisher grew its online audience, as well as profits from $3M in 2018 to $13M in 2019, thanks to a daily email newsletter format. Morning Brew has also seen steep growth of its subscriber base which stood at 160K in 2020 but recently crossed the 2M subscribers mark in April 2020 – equivalent to 13x growth in 24 months.
As Nicolas Bolt from LiveIntent writes: “If your business model depends on ad revenue or paid-subscription signups, email is an optimal way to monetise your inventory while enticing new subscribers to your site.”
