Are you aware of the new trend in email marketing where people are actually paying to receive email content?
Yes, many thought leaders, experts, and brands are now offering premium email subscriptions that readers pay a monthly fee to receive. Some newsletters have thousands of paying customers who eagerly wait for new emails to hit their inboxes.

While charging your readers likely isn’t something you want to do if you represent a brand, this trend can help you rethink your email marketing and realize the inbox is getting cleaned out.

Let’s look at what is driving readers to pay to subscribe and see how you can recreate some of these best practices to boost opens, clicks, and audience enthusiasm and engagement.

Ensure Email Deliverability

Readers won’t have an opportunity to be excited about your email if it doesn’t make it to their inbox. Deliverability (the ability for email to avoid junk folders and show up in an inbox) has never been more important.

On October 3, 2023, both Google and Yahoo announced that they were adding new email inbox protections to reduce spam. The changes added new restrictions to bulk sender policies, which could directly impact email deliverability.

If you are a brand or marketer who sends emails to a large list of recipients, you must authenticate your email to ensure the delivery of your emails.

To make sure your emails are landing in inboxes, authenticate your email account by following the directions provided by your email marketing provider. Check out these resources for:

Not sure if your email is authenticated? Get help from the email marketing experts at SpotOn. Contact us today.

Increase Open Rates

Once an email hits your audience’s inbox, the next step is getting readers to open it. Follow these trends to ensure that readers are eager to open every email you send.

Spice Up Subject Lines

The subject line is one of the first things a reader sees when your email lands in front of them. Test these trends to make your email irresistible.

Use personalization. Include the recipient’s name or other personalized details to catch attention.
Include emojis. Stand out in a sea of text with an eye-catching emoji.
Be personable. Try subject lines that sound like the simple phrases used in personal emails instead of a promotional or headline-style subject line.
Consider repetition. Audiences recognize repetition. Consider using the same intro phrase or emoji in a subject line to help readers notice your new email.
Don’t overlook the preview text. Use the space after the subject line as a further invitation to open the email.
Test to see what works. Run A/B tests and measure email marketing benchmarks to identify which subject lines produce the highest open rates.
Don’t settle on your first idea. Come up with a variety of subject line options (you can use AI to give you a long list of ideas) and then choose the best.

For ideas and inspiration, look at these examples of subject lines for the Why We Buy Newsletter. (It’s not a paid email, but it has over 60,000 subscribers.) Each subject line uses the same brain emoji and phrase “Why We Buy” along with a short snippet of a topic that is covered inside.

Customize Sender Name

One element of email marketing that often gets overlooked is the sender’s name. Many brands don’t think much about it and plug in their brand as the sender name. But here are a few other options to try.

Feature a department or category along with the brand name. Including a department such as “Customer Success at YourBrand” can segment emails and make them more eye-catching to the intended audience.
Add a personal name along with the brand name. SpotOn emails come from “Robyn at SpotOn Digital Media” as this shows a person (our founder, Robyn Spoto) is behind the email.
Include just a name. Elevate the personal touch of an email even more by considering sending from a well-known leader within your organization.

Here are two examples of how adding a name to an email can make it feel more personalized and custom.

Maintain Consistency

When a reader pays for an email newsletter, you can rest assured the creator will get it out on time. Make that same commitment to consistency in your email marketing. Deliver emails on a schedule. Whether that is once a week, once a month, or even once a quarter, create a schedule. Let your audience know the schedule, and stick to it to provide a resource audiences can rely on.

Increase Clicks & Engagement

Once you get audiences to open your email, the next goal is getting them to engage with your content. Follow these trends to encourage audiences to click your links, follow your call-to-actions, and interact with your content.

Deliver Value Every Time

The reason audiences are willing to pay for email content is summed up in one word: value. The emails are so valuable that audiences are willing to exchange money for ideas, insights, and information inside. Take this same approach to your branded emails to ensure your audience reads every email you send.

Instead of sending vague information to your entire list, use segmentation to give audiences content that is most relevant to their interests, habits, and past purchases.
Take it one step further and use hyper-personalization to deliver custom emails that are triggered by individual actions, such as purchasing a specific product or downloading a particular piece of content.
Give readers exclusive content they can’t get anywhere else by sharing deep insights from your unique perspective or experience, special offers available only to the email list, and well-curated lists of resources.

Use Interactive Content to Entice Clicks

Emails often feel like a one-way conversation. Instead of talking to your audience through email, create back-and-forth interaction. Use interactive content that looks enticing to click and gives a reader a good reason to take action. It works. Dyspatch survey revealed that 60% of people are likely to engage with an interactive email.

Surveys/Polls: Ask a question or include a graphic for a survey or pool.
Quizzes: Invite readers to select answers to a quiz.
Games: Offer a game, such as spinning a wheel or finding hidden elements in a graphic.
Reveals: Tease content with a slider that reveals what is on the other side.
Product Sliders: Add a slider that makes audiences click to scroll to see more.

Use design elements that appear to be interactive, even if they aren’t exactly. For example, use the design principles that encourage clicks, such as slider buttons and radio buttons, to move readers to take action. Here is a great example from Grammarly on how you can use design elements to make a click feel more satisfying to your readers.

Keep Up with Email Marketing Trends

Email marketing is powerful. The number of paid newsletters emerging proves that people still want to receive valuable, useful content in their inboxes. Follow these best practices to give audiences what they want and need so you get what you want and need — more opens, clicks, and engagement from your ideal audience.

Need help with executing these email marketing strategies? Let’s talk. See how SpotOn’s team of email marketing experts can help you create campaigns your audience can’t wait to read. Contact us to get started.

Follow These Email Trends To Boost Opens, Clicks, and Audience Enthusiasm