The first hurdle you have to overcome as an e-mail marketer: how do you get your customers’ e-mail addresses? Without the user’s consent, you can forget sending out newsletters. But since almost every website, blog, or online store operator now wants to send its users regular e-mails, you might find that very few users are willing to part with their personal details easily. Therefore, it’s best to find a strategy where both sides benefit.
Marketing specialists can adopt a technique from the online newspaper sector to do precisely that: gated content. In order to create additional ways of making a profit in addition to advertisements, some internet magazines place special articles behind a paywall. The rest of the content is still available free of charge but those who want to read the premium articles have to pay. Other journals offer a certain contingent of freely available content. If the user has reached their article limit, further articles are only available after payment has been received.
However, as an online marketer, your currency is customer data. It makes sense to create content that will only be activated once the user has entered their personal information by subscribing to the newsletter. Only content that provides users with real added value is suitable for this: customers are happy to share their details in exchange for whitepapers, statistics, or online courses. You could provide a preview so that users can see in advance whether it’s worthwhile signing up.