Do You Really Need To Collect Emails For Your Online Digital Content Business?

Almost all online digital content creation gurus like to emphasize that all online digital content creators should start collecting the emails of the people who consume their online digital content.

This is the reason why so many online digital content creators have been enticing online digital content consumers with such digital content like free ebooks, courses and so on in exchange for email addresses and perhaps other consumer information.

But who can blame them? The price of an email address once sold to email collecting agencies vary from a few cents up to hundreds of dollars. This is the reason that there are even online content creators who are tricking digital content consumers into handing out their emails.

But as even Neil Patel the famous American digital content guru likes to point out, email addresses are like digital ATMs. This is because each email address collected can be a potential source of revenue if you are selling anything like ads, physical products and so on.

Digital content consumers don’t automatically give out their email address and their other information just because they have consumed your digital content. Many digital content consumers are just that: consumers who don’t want to pay for digital content. That’s why online digital content creators use a lure to bait their digital content consumers into handing out their email address as well as other information. There are online digital content creators who give away free digital products like ebooks, video courses and so on.

Others resort to giving out physical products like printed books, posters, stickers, mugs and so on. Others give much more than this like online coaching, physical appearances and so on. This are just some of the ways of enticing digital content consumers to hand out their emails.

Others are more gimmicky. There are online digital content creators who conduct both online and physical raffle events. Others go on literal tours just to collect email addresses. But to be more precise, it is not only online digital content creators who are doing this, but others as well.

And when I mean others. I mean the entire business community who have a digital exposure. Many businesses today leverage the power of their website to collect the email and other information of those who visited their website. This is because each visitor is a potential client.

There have been several instances in my life when a shop that I went to offered to give me a complimentary gift like a keychain in exchange for my email address and other information. Sometimes, a shop would collect email addresses in exchange for the store’s raffle tickets.

A lot of time have passed but up to today, none of these stores that collected my email address have actually sent me an email. Thinking about it, I think these shops have just wasted money on their customer email collection efforts.

The same goes for online content creators. You may be able to collect a lot of email addresses but do you actually have the time and resources to monetize all the email addresses that you have collected?

For example, if the reason why you collect email addresses is to sell products such as ebooks, courses or physical products, do you have the time to process the payments made by your buyers?

You might be a blogger and want to offer additional blog posts to people who have handed out their emails to you, but do you have the time to create additional blog posts in the first place? These are just some of the things you need to think about when trying to collect emails.

This should be the first question you ask yourself if ever you want to collect emails and even while you’re still planning to monetize your online content. There are online content creators who specifically have no plans to collect emails.

For them, they want a simpler life. All they want is to produce content and monetize it with not much hassle like with ad monetization. Many aspiring digital content creators underestimate the time and effort involved in monetizing an online content.

For example, if all your monetization is thru ads, all you need to do is place ads on the content you produce. Usually, at the end of the month, your ad revenue is sent to you by the online ad broker that handles your ad account. This is as simple as it gets.

With an email monetization strategy, you have to prepare an email which usually contains marketing content. Then you have to send it out. Be prepared to send out hundreds of emails and never receive a reply back.

This is because on average, an average person receives several emails a day and people usually just scan through the title of the email before they decide to delete it. Most people don’t bother to read their emails. This is how much rejection your email marketing effort can get.

One thing you need to consider when you collect emails is that it is for the most part a two way process. You may email marketing content to one customer who never buys anything from you but emails you back with their own marketing emails.

You can be sent spam and other unwanted email content when you send emails. This is just how much you expose yourself when you send email. If these kinds of reply emails are just a little bit in number, it might be manageable.

But what if someone sends a reply to your marketing email not only once but a hundred times? What if every person you sent an email to does the same thing? In effect this situation can essentially take over not only your marketing efforts but your life itself.

For example, my website mainly receives sales related email for such services as digital content optimization, digital creation courses and so on. And I’m not even actively handing out my email address. Think what it could do to you if you send out email address in volume.

Imagine if you’re scaling up your digital content creation business, think of this situation. But ultimately, as your business scales, you would have to decide if you want to have an active email marketing strategy. Decide on this even before you start an online content business.

If ever you want to do email marketing, you would also need to consider the cost. In the beginning, while you’re still starting email marketing, your basic free email softwares like Gmail can handle it.

But as the number of your email addresses start to stack up. You may need to use more mass mailing softwares like MailChimp, but these softwares come at a cost. This is especially important when you’re just starting out.

Many beginner content creators just basically collect email addresses with no idea of how to monetize their email list or of the cost involved in actually sending these emails. If you’re just starting out in content creation and broke, better concentrate first in creating content.

What you could however do to minimize your cost is to be selective of the people you send emails to. This is to save cost and time as well as scaling up your chances of monetizing your email list.

This can be achieved with a well thought out email subscription form in your website which not only asks for email addresses but also asks for information that can be used to profile the person handing out their email.

You have to decide early on even in the planning stages of your digital content creation business if an email marketing strategy is essential to your business. This is because this strategy might not be very profitable for you according to your standards.

It takes a lot of time and resources to do email marketing. Collecting emails is in itself very hard already but it pales in comparison to monetizing your email list. But don’t get it wrong, email lists can be very profitable and are even called digital ATMS if you know how to use them.

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