E-mail list valuation

From: Brendan King <bking_at_point2.com>
Date: Wed 07 Feb 2001 17:23:09 -0600

BRANDI JASMINE <brandi_at_brandijasmine.com> WROTE:
> I maintain a list which is published daily. Right now
> we have over 2,800 subscribers ... how big does that
> list have to be before it becomes a marketable
> commodity for ads or sponsorships? What rates are
> common for email advertising "banners"?

To Brandi Jasmine and Nelson Timken. I will try and
answer your question as best I can. Please note that
the only variable that you have given us is the number
of subscribers. I can give you some general guidelines,
but it is difficult to answer the questions without
having the values of many other parameters including
but not restricted to the following:

Here is a partial list of some of the parameters to be
considered when determining the worth of an e-mail
list:

1) Quantity of e-mail addresses on list
2) Frequency of mailings
3) Demographics of list (age, gender, geographic
        region, occupation, income) to name a few
4) Origin of list.
5) Content of the mail.
6) Number and quality of banners and/or sponsors
7) advertisers product and price point.

All of these factors contribute to how much ads or
sponsors will pay. E-mail banners and sponsorships are
generally sold at rates from $40.00/1000 to
$350.00/1000 . Where your newsletter falls in that
spectrum is largely dependant on the other parameters.
Quantity, Frequency and Demographics all have obvious
and easily identifiable effects (if you want more info
on this e-mail me or the list and I will oblige).

The origin of the list determines the quality of the
prospects. If it is truly an opt-in list from a
targeted vertical website the list will be worth more.
If the list comes from sites that capture e-mail
addresses only to sell them, then it will be worth
less.

The content of the mail is extremely important.
Relevance and usefulness is King. Users will give a
newsletter/e-mail one, two and just maybe three chances
to provide them with some form of valuable information.
The ongoing success of your newsletter is directly tied
to its content and relevance.

Sponsors and advertisers invariably look at who and
what was advertised in your newsletter in the past.
Your past advertisers set the tone for the future. The
products, price points and relevance of their ads and
products will be of issue. Like it or not any new
advertiser is associating itself with the other
advertisers.

Another factor to consider when setting your pricing
and searching for advertisers is the price point and
margin of the product the advertisers are trying to
sell. If your list if very focused and filled with
decision makers for high value and margin products the
makers/sellers of those products will pay a
correspondingly higher amount for the space. Why sell
your inventory out at a low CPM when a little digging
could provide you with a much higher CPM and set the
tone for future sales?

> how do you grow an email opt-in list to that size?

The answer that most people will give you is this.
Build a premium quality website that provides a true
value to its users. Set up a method for them to opt-in
and reward them in some way when they do. I.E. provide
the results to a survey, let them see the archived
version of news etc. Your list will slowly build, it
will be a solid quality list and you will have earned
it.

I don't know if you can tell from my writing style, but
I am a little short on patience. The above methodology
is how we obtained our first 10,000 subscribers. The
next 10,000 were added by more speedy and aggressive
means. Our site offers a number of free services:
Classifieds, Want ads, job listings and industry
directory listing. I sought out other sites in our
industry that offers some of the same types of
services. Once you find these sites you can pull the
users e-mail address of off them either manually or
with a spider. This is the point where we separate the
spammers from savvy advertisers. Each of these
"e-mail" addresses are sent an e-mail saying "I saw
your classified ad (want ad, job listing or what ever)
on www.whatever.com . Our site www.yoursite.com offers
a similar free service. Placing your free ad on our
site will expose you to over x unique viewers per
month! If you want to sign up please click here
www.mysignuplink.com . Best Regards, Brendan King.

Out of every 1000 of these I have never had more then 2
users asking me to take them off the list. Remember,
individually address each e-mail and be sure to mail it
from your own personal e-mail. Make sure the offer is
relevant and will actually help them.

> Second, what is the viability as a marketing tool of
> HTML email vis a vis regular text?

When you send out your e-mail make sure to send both a
HTML version and a text version. This is easily done,
ask your IT people they'll know exactly what I am
talking about. One last note: With HTML e-mails you
can embed an 1x1 white pixel gif into your e-mail.
This gif will be downloaded from your servers whenever
someone previews or opens your mail. This will give you
the open rate of the mail. You can even go one step
further and have the e-mail address returned with the
download request. This way you will know both who did
and who did not open the e-mail.

Hope this helps,
Just My nickel's worth,

Brendan King
Director of Marketing
Point2 Internet Systems
E-mail: Bking_at_point2.com
Phone: 306 955 1855
www.Point2.com





Received on Wed Feb 07 2001 - 17:23:09 CST