When it comes to monetizing emails, publishers have many ad formats to choose from — native ads, display ads, text ads, and dedicated ads being just a few.
Still, there’s one email ad format growing in popularity among publishers and brand partners: sponsored email ads. With sponsored emails, publishers can monetize their newsletters without interrupting the user experience, and brands can tap into built-in audiences of subscribers.
The problem is that many publishers are still hardcoding these sponsored email ad placements. And while that’s been the norm for a long time, it’s not the only option anymore.
With the right tools, publishers can now automate sponsored email logo placements — making the monetization process even faster and more convenient.
Here’s what you need to know.
What are sponsored emails?
For a quick refresher, sponsored emails are publisher-created emails paid for by brands. They usually include a sponsored header with language like, “Sponsored by,” “Supported by,” or “Paid for by,” along with native ad placements within the email.
Just look at this email from Morning Brew, sponsored by Fidelity. The Fidelity logo is featured above the fold in a clickable unit with the disclaimer “Together with Fidelity.”
The email also contains a Fidelity-sponsored native ad, which blends in with the surrounding organic content.
What are the benefits of running a sponsored email ad?
Sponsored emails offer many benefits for publishers, including:
- Creative control. Instead of trying to fit clunky display ads into their newsletter templates, publishers can largely run their emails as-is. They’ll just include a disclaimer at the top and a non-disruptive native ad in the middle.
- Increased revenue. By monetizing their emails with sponsored content, publishers can drive revenue from their subscriber lists and build valuable brand partnerships.
- Seamless subscriber experiences. Since sponsored ads match their surrounding content, they yield smoother and more intuitive user experiences.
This email from The New York Times, for example, is sponsored by Apple. But the ad disclaimer blends in with the rest of the newsletter and doesn’t affect the actual content of the email, which the subscriber signed up to receive:
No more hardcoding: How to automate sponsored email ad units
Until now, publishers have been hardcoding those above-the-fold sponsored email logos. That means they build them directly into their ESP, type out the copy, and add the URL manually.
Yes, that can work. But it’s also tedious and time-consuming.
Now, there’s a more convenient solution: Jeeng can make that sponsored logo its own single ad unit. This way, you can traffic and serve it the same way you do the rest of your ads. And you can save valuable time and resources by automating the whole process.
So in the above example from The New York Times, the “Supported by Apple” disclaimer would be served as a single ad unit:
That means, instead of hardcoding a sponsored logo through your ESP, you can launch it dynamically through your email ad server. And if it doesn’t run for some reason, it won’t be replaced by backfilled ads. It’ll just collapse and be hidden from the user.
In fact, we’ve already done this for American City Business Journals, helping the publisher unlock more effective opportunities for monetization.
“The use of Jeeng’s native template to serve text-based logos has allowed our ad operations to display branding and sponsorship of an email template — cross-device — without using large amounts of real-estate and vertical space,” said Steve Maynor, Advertising Operations Manager of American City Business Journals. “We are able to market our sponsor’s brand while not holding a subscriber back from relevant content within the newsletter. Using these logos and accompanying banner slots, we provide our partners multiple branding opportunities within our emails and for long partnerships.”
Ready to streamline your own sponsored emails with ready-made logo units? Contact us to get started.
