How to Grow Your Newsletter Revenue Using Influencers Leverage the right influencers and access their followers to strategically grow your subscriber base and increase exposure for your brand.

Email newsletters are an effective way of sending customers information about new products, company updates, and CTAs. However, right now many companies are struggling to increase their subscriber base through traditional marketing techniques. Fortunately, by working with social media influencers, you can boost your subscriber count and increase your newsletter revenue.

Whether you're looking to promote products for a direct-to-consumer online store or to promote your company's B2B services, you can use the right influencer to gain exposure for your brand. Through social media posts, a strategic influencer can provide you with access to their thousands of followers, causing immediate growth (and revenue) for your newsletter.

Once you locate the ideal influencer for your newsletter, you can use a CRM platform like Constant Contact to automate the subscription process — your influencer creates a post about your newsletter and then interested parties click to subscribe and are added to your email list.

In this brief article, we will discuss how to use influencer marketing to increase your newsletter's revenue by covering the following topics:

1. Finding the right influencers for your company

2. Using free giveaways to gain newsletter subscribers

3. Using email to tie it all together

Constant Contact

Finding the right influencers for your company.

Influencers are socially savvy personalities who tend to be more skilled with digital content than major brands. And they generally specialize in certain areas or sub-categories within a given industry. Influencer marketing for newsletters can be extremely effective in gaining new subscribers so long as you find the right personality for your company.

When determining just how influential a social media guru is, consider the following criteria:

• Relevance — Read through an influencer's feed or posts to ensure their message is aligned with your brand. The ideal candidate should not only share a similar demographic, but also a common vibe.

• Reach — To determine an influencer's reach, take a look at their unique visitors. However, more important than the total number of unique visitors or follower count is the quality of the reach. Is the influencer effective at reaching their intended demographic? If so, they don't need to be a massively popular influencer. Sometimes micro-influencers can be just as effective.

• Engagement — If you want to use an influencer to grow your newsletter revenue, you need someone that interacts organically with their base. Look at their posts and comments — do readers respond at all, and if so, is the response positive or negative?

• Frequency — Optimal influencers should be posting content on a consistent basis. Usually, that means at least once every day or two. And make sure to double-check that they have been posting recently and that the account isn't abandoned.

Armed with this knowledge, you can now use influencer search engines like CreatorIQ, Upfluence or AspireIQ to find a candidate that measures up. Many influencer search engines offer a free demo or trial. After providing routine information about your business, you can view a vetted community of influencers of different sizes and from different industries.

Remember, the goal is to use an influencer, or even several influencers, to promote your company's newsletter through social posts. Depending on the platform, this might mean content on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Constant Contact

Using free giveaways to gain newsletter subscribers.

One of the best ways for an influencer to promote your newsletter is with a free giveaway as an incentive for people to sign up.

For instance, a graphic designer might want to give away free designs, while a restaurant might offer a coupon. The chosen incentive depends on your business and demographic. The influencer can use this free giveaway as the cornerstone of their messaging about the newsletter.

Here are some examples of free giveaways to use as an incentive for signing up for your newsletter:

• Exclusive Content — This is a relatively easy-to-create, yet highly valuable free giveaway option. Create a PDF document with exclusive content that your ideal audience would love to read. This could include blog-style content, inspiring insights about your industry or even an instructional guide about a specific topic. The exclusivity of the content will make your new subscribers feel special for obtaining it.

• Free Products or Services — This can be difficult due to the cost of making or acquiring products, as well as the cost of mailing out the items. However, if you can think of a cost-effective, real-life product or cost-free service to give away as an incentive for signing up to your email list, it will be highly attractive to your potential subscriber.

• Discount Code — This is a time-effective way to create a "free giveaway," as you won't have to spend time designing exclusive content or orchestrating a giveaway of a physical product or service. All you have to do is create a discount code of some kind (a "buy one get one" offer or a percentage discount coupon) and give it to anyone who signs up for your email list.

• Raffle Ticket — As an alternative to giving away a real-life product/service or offering a discount code, you can create a raffle for a chance to win a free product or service. This is especially perfect for companies whose products or services are high-end purchases, as it wouldn't be reasonable to create a free giveaway to everyone who signs up for the email list.

It's all about understanding your audience and providing value for them, both with the free giveaway and with the quality of your newsletter.

Constant Contact

Using email to tie it all together.

When an influencer posts about your newsletter, users who click the link to subscribe should be placed into an automated email series that welcomes them to your newsletter, tells them how to follow through in receiving their free giveaway and may include additional emails.

The idea is to place these subscribers into their own group, in addition to being brought into the fold of your primary subscriber list.

This entire process is straightforward and user-friendly thanks to Constant Contact's streamlined dashboard.

Follow these steps before the influencer or free giveaway campaign begins:

1. First, create a brand new automated email series for the new subscribers that found you via the influencer or free giveaway campaign. Include a welcome message as well as any information they need regarding the free giveaway. You may also need to request information from them (such as their mailing address). You may also wish to include any other emails you have within your normal "subscriber welcome" series.

2. Next, create an email list sign-up form within Constant Contact that will live on your site, specifically for users who are signing up thanks to the influencer or free giveaway campaign. This is the link you will give to your influencer to promote. These sign-ups will be added to a special list within Constant Contact, and be entered into the email series.

3. Finally, be sure to integrate this email list into your primary subscriber list so that these users will be included in your main group of subscribers, not just their own special list.

Combining the promotional reach of the right influencer with a quality newsletter can increase your subscriber base and revenue. By using a CRM like Constant Contact, you can simplify the process while keeping an eye on valuable metrics.

Contrary to popular belief, influencers are not reserved for big brands like Apple, Coca-Cola, etc. In fact, there is a wide range of influencers that are accessible and affordable to businesses of all sizes. And they provide near-instant access to industry-related demographics. Whether you're promoting your company's B2B services, or selling directly to customers online, one of the best ways to grow your newsletter's revenue is via influencer marketing.