In today’s marketing landscape, there are more media channels than ever before. On the positive side, that means more opportunities to get your message out. On the downside, there’s more competition than ever to capture audience attention.
The proliferation of media means more ads, and those ads are more intrusive. It’s not just a print ad, a TV or radio commercial. It’s full-page online pop-up ads that make you find the elusive “X” to remove them, auto-play videos to be endured before seeing desired content, banner ads that show up everywhere, and ads that even track you through retargeting, from computer to mobile device and back again.
People have grown weary of any and all advertising. According to a HubSpot study, most people find many ads obnoxious or intrusive, unprofessional, or insulting. What’s more revealing for advertisers is that these types of ads give viewers a poor opinion of not only the websites they lead to but also the brands they represent. So your marketing investment may be having the opposite effect on people than you intended; it may create a poor impression of your brand on people, rather than a favorable one.
More Ads, More Frustration: Enter Ad Blockers
Not surprisingly, people have found a way around the frustration of today’s advertising bombardment: ad-blocking extensions. According to a recent report by PageFair & Adobe, 198 million Internet users actively use ad blockers to prevent incoming digital marketing vehicles like banners, pop-ups and in-line ads from appearing on their favorite websites and social media, and the use of ad blockers has grown by more than 30% over the past year. Ad blocking typically affects anywhere from 15% – 50% of a website publisher’s traffic, and it is especially typical on gaming sites, where the audiences are very tech-savvy and able to implement ad-blocking technology.
So what is an advertiser to do?
Choose Email
Advertisers seeking to “bypass the ad blockers” might be surprised to learn that there is a medium that can help them circumvent the ad-blocking phenomenon, and it’s not a social media trend-of-the-moment. It’s email. Consider this: the most frequently used apps on the Internet today are not Facebook or Twitter. They are, in fact, Apple Mail and Gmail.
Email is where the eyeballs are, and it’s not going away, as some think. In fact, email is stronger than ever; most brands plan to send more email this year and continue that increase. Email marketing boasts an ROI of 3800% and drives more conversions than any other channel. Advertising messages are five times more likely to be seen in email than they are on Facebook, and email is 40 times more effective for acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. All in all, that’s tremendously powerful potential.
Why the high rate of return from email? Quite simply, it’s the one place brands have a solid, direct connection with an end-user — a connection that lasts and isn’t dependent on a browser, device or search engine. People tend to maintain their email address long-term; they are more likely to change their physical address then they are to change their email address.
Unfortunately, for all the advantages email brings, avoiding ad blocking by simply sending out emails doesn’t quite cut it; it’s very hard to advertise using platforms like Apple mail or Gmail directly. So how can you still take advantage of the strengths of email and all of the potential it offers?
Capture the Right Eyeballs in Email Newsletters
One way is by placing ads in email newsletters delivered by publishers who are already sending them out to engage, opted-in audiences. Publishers of email newsletters are looking for ways to monetize their existing vehicles, maximize their yield, and, for the most part, they welcome the placement of ads as a way to do that.
For advertisers, this means you can insert highly targeted, dynamically delivered ads into existing customer and prospect email campaigns, getting around ad blockers to reach a captive audience. Best of all, these audiences are highly open to seeing certain content already proven to be interesting to them. Newsletter subscribers have opted to receive marketing messages from publishers; they trust and value the publisher’s content. Placing your ads within this context helps you coattail on that trust and attention. You just need to make your ads relevant, informative, and able to tap into the reader’s interests through personalization.
Personalizing your ads is easy since you already know all about the reader through the newsletter’s targeting. Match your ad content to this person’s likes, dislikes, personality and needs, and you’ll build trust and loyalty, and boost click-through rates.
Be Compelling Enough for Click-Through to Action.
A key part of personalization involves storytelling. Don’t just advertise a new household product – share with the reader five ways this product will make their lives easier. Don’t just advertise a new service that will save them time and worry – suggest the ways they’ll use their newfound time to do something they love.
These types of highly personalized stories will lead readers to your landing page, where you can flesh out the solution to their problem: your product. At that point, the user is engaged and interested, and more likely to purchase your product or service.
The best part – it’s easy.
There are solutions available today that automate this entire dynamic email advertising process. These solutions can partner you with the right network of newsletter publishers who have the right audience, and help you develop targeted, relevant content sure to get the audience to interact positively with your brand.
With a new outlook on email, the right ad strategy, and a capable, dynamic email partner, you can bypass the blockers – and take advantage of the true power that email advertising has to offer.
