As different marketing channels come and go, it’s no secret that email newsletters have a surprising amount of staying power and engagement. On average, newsletters earn an open rate of 22%, dominating other content channels like Facebook (which has a .07% engagement rate). As a marketer, if you’re not harnessing the power of newsletter advertising, you’re missing out.
In our latest blog series, we’ll explore how you can use newsletter sponsorships to meet different goals at any stage of the marketing funnel.
In this post, we’ll examine how to use newsletter advertising from Paved to boost brand awareness and quality traffic.
What is brand awareness?
People can't interact with a brand they've never heard of. Enter: brand awareness campaigns.
This marketing goal aims to help consumers or businesses build a connection with your brand, which makes them more likely to make purchases.
In the newsletter ad industry, here’s how we typically measure the success of a brand awareness campaign:
- •Opens and clicks
Ideally, a newsletter ad focusing on brand awareness should have a good open and click rate, indicating the number of impressions received. - •Quality traffic
This refers to the demographics and interests of the people who are clicking your ad, and how well they fit your ideal customer profile. For example, if you’re advertising health products, you probably want to attract plenty of traffic from fitness enthusiasts. - •Engagement
This focuses on how people behave after they click your ad. Do they linger on your landing page, or do they bounce quickly? Time spent on your page is a good indicator of success.
3 brand awareness strategies
Here at Paved, we focus on 3 different formats for email advertising. Check out each section to see how companies are boosting their brand awareness with different ad formats.
1. Native advertising in newsletters
Native advertising is one of the most effective methods for increasing brand awareness, but did you know you could do it in the web’s most popular email newsletters?
Sponsored emails are promotional messages or ads that appear alongside regular newsletter content. These ads are non-intrusive, easy to scale into different publications, and highly customizable.
By serving up native ads in publications like Fast Company or Inc. This Morning, advertisers can gain the trust of their large reader bases by providing content in their newsletter.
Here’s a great example from Laika, an enterprise company that helps other businesses with IT compliance.
When building a brand awareness campaign, Laika supplied a clear value proposition for newsletter readers to motivate them to click. The ad directed readers to a landing page where they could download a free compliance guide—resulting in thousands of click-throughs and plenty of valuable traffic.
Benefits of email sponsorship
Here are some of the top benefits of email sponsorships for driving brand awareness.
- •Wide reach
You can run your ad spot in multiple newsletters, casting a wide net and reaching different audiences in your niche—encouraging people to interact with your brand or visit your website. - •Budget
Since sponsored email ad placements only take up a small portion of a newsletter, this ad format is often more budget-friendly than dedicated emails.
💡 Tip:
Use the Paved Marketplace to find publications that are highly rated by advertisers in your industry for boosting brand awareness.
Browse Newsletters with Top Reviews from Sponsors
2. Brand partnerships through dedicated emails
Another key strategy for boosting brand exposure is brand partnerships. As a newer product or brand, it can be helpful to lean on influencers and popular publications to raise awareness.
Think about it this way: if people love a brand that’s similar to yours, chances are they’ll enjoy yours, too. For example, Basecamp—a project management tool for startups—recently used Paved to partner with Betapage—an email newsletter for startup founders.
The marketing team at Basecamp collaborated with the Betapage newsletter to send a dedicated email to their subscriber list. Basecamp earned high-quality traffic that fit their ideal customer profile by delivering a relevant and topical message for startups, Basecamp earned high-quality traffic that fit their ideal customer profile.
Unlike sponsored emails, dedicated emails like this one are entirely devoted to the advertiser’s message. Since dedicated email advertising takes up the entirety of an email, it can be pricier than traditional email sponsorships. However, dedicated emails often bring the highest engagement and brand awareness.
Benefits of dedicated emails
Here’s why dedicated emails are great for driving brand awareness:
- •Focused Marketing
With dedicated sends, all newsletter real estate is 100% dedicated to the advertiser’s message. - •High Engagement
Compared to other forms of email advertising, dedicated emails typically win the highest click-through rates (CTRs) and open rates.
💡 Tip:
Browse hundreds of newsletters with available dedicated email sponsorships in the Paved Marketplace. Connect with the readership of publications from Buzzfeed, Entrepreneur.com, Inside.com, MarketingProfs, and many more.
3. Performance marketing with programmatic ads for email
Much like social or display ads, programmatic ads for email help marketers advertise across a range of hundreds of publications. Programmatic email ads present unique advantages to advertisers, including contextual targeting and enhanced scalability.
With brand-engagement campaigns on the Paved Ad Network, you can maximize your brand's exposure on relevant newsletters.
For instance, let’s say you want to target startup employees in North America from ages 30-45. Rather than looking for a newsletter with that exact demographic, you can launch a campaign in the Paved Ad Network and set your target audience accordingly.
From there, you can add specifications like your budget, frequency cap, and run dates. Then, your ad placement will appear across several newsletters to get in front of subscribers within your specified audience.
Benefits of the Paved Ad Network
Here’s how programmatic email ads can supercharge brand awareness:
- •Contextual and demographic targeting
Our programmatic ad format allows you to hyper-target potential customers with Facebook or LinkedIn-level segmentation. No matter who you’re targeting, you can reach your ideal customer profile on the Ad Network. - •Affordable ads in high-quality newsletters
Instead of paying the full newsletter sponsorship cost, Ad Network placements can help you save thousands of dollars since they’re run on a CPC basis. You’re not paying for access to the whole subscriber list. You only pay for ad clicks.
💡 Tip:
With a Paved Ad Network campaign, it’s easy to A/B test your content. This means you can try out different versions of your ad design to see what boosts brand awareness the most.
Conclusion
Overall, the audience fit is the most crucial element of a successful brand awareness campaign.
With Paved, you can find newsletter sponsorship opportunities in any niche or interest group. Plus, we make it easy to experiment with different ad formats to see what resonates with your brand.
Sign up with Paved today to start working with publishers and get your brand seen.
