10 ways how to make money with email marketing [2025]

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Wondering how to make money with email marketing?

There are plenty of ways to make money with emails, so making money by sending emails is definitely possible with the right approach. And crucially, with a high return on investment and the ability to reach your target audience directly where they’re at, it’s more important than ever to learn how to make money with email marketing.

In this guide, we’ll explore 10 proven strategies to start making money with email marketing, along with practical tips to implement them successfully.

Why email marketing is profitable

Email marketing is a powerful and lucrative way to make money online. It offers a high return on investment (ROI) and is often more effective than other marketing channels. Let’s explore what makes email marketing so profitable:

Easy to use

Modern email marketing platforms have made it easier than ever for businesses of all sizes to create and manage email campaigns. With user-friendly interfaces and drag-and-drop editors, you don’t need to be a tech expert to craft professional-looking emails.

These tools frequently come with pre-designed templates, automation features, and analytics dashboards, making it simple to create, send, and track the performance of your campaigns.

High ROI

According to the Direct Marketing Association, in 2023, email marketing in the UK generated an average return of £42 for every £1 spent. That’s an astounding 4,200% ROI. In the same year, Omnisend’s US merchants saw this figure reach $68. Such an ROI  makes it one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies available.

Affordable

Email marketing tools are also often more affordable than many other marketing solutions. Platforms like Omnisend offer free plans and paid subscriptions starting as low as $16 per month. These tools include features like email automation, list segmentation, and analytics for performance tracking, helping you get the most out of your email marketing without breaking the bank.

Investing in an email marketing tool can save time and money while boosting your revenue. What’s more, the scalability of these platforms allows you to grow your email marketing efforts alongside your customer base, ensuring a consistent ROI as you expand your online business.

“The only platform where you control 100% of your audience is through your email marketing. When I send out an email, I know that everybody on that email list, who wants that email, gets that email.” Bahzad Trinos, Naked & Famous Denim How Bahzad increased revenue with emails

How to build an email list

Building an effective email list is essential for a successful email marketing strategy. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Optimize your website

Optimize your site with popups, embedded forms, teasers, and landing pages to gather subscribers. You might offer a discount code or a freebie like an eBook in exchange for their email address. Tools like these are highly effective and incentivize visitors to sign up and help grow your list organically.

2. Host giveaways or contests

Organize contests or giveaways where participants need to provide their email addresses to enter. This can quickly boost your subscriber count, especially if you offer an attractive prize.

3. Share on social media

Promote your email signup forms on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X. Share links to your signup forms in your posts and stories, and consider running social media ads to reach a wider audience.

4. Set up in-store signups

If you have a physical store, encourage customers to sign up for your email list at the point of sale. Offer a small discount on their current purchase as an incentive.

5. Build partnerships

Collaborate with complementary businesses or influencers in your niche to cross-promote each other’s email lists. This can help you tap into new audiences and grow your subscriber base.

Ways to make money with email marketing

Now that we’ve covered the basics let’s get to the heart of how to make money with email marketing in 2025:

• Sell your own product or service
• Use different discounts
• Upsell and cross-sell your products
• Use customer lifecycle maps
• Automate your most important campaigns
• Sell affiliated products
• Create and share original content
• Redirect subscribers to other websites
• Sell your own AI tool
• Include social proof in emails

1. Sell your own product or service

Selling your own product through email marketing can be very profitable. The benefits of having your own product include control over pricing, branding, and customer experience. Your profit margins are also higher compared to selling other people’s products.

Here are examples of products you could sell:

• Personal coaching: One-on-one coaching sessions work well for niches like fitness, business, or life and career coaching, and email marketing is an effective way to nurture relationships and book more sessions
• Digital products: Books, courses, and software can be easily delivered via email after purchase
• Handmade jewelry: Showcase new collections and limited-edition pieces to your email subscribers
• Subscription boxes: Use email marketing to promote and manage recurring deliveries of specially curated products
• Artisan chocolate: Craft unique, high-quality chocolates and use email to share your story, product updates, and special offers

Speaking of chocolate, listen to this story of the founder of TO’ak Chocolate, Jerry Toth, who moved to Ecuador and began a brand that relies on emails:

Listen on: Apple Podcasts  |  Spotify  | Pandora

2. Use different discounts

Offering discounts is another proven way to boost sales and encourage purchases from your email subscribers. Here are some effective discount strategies:

• Limited-time offers: Create urgency with limited-time offers and discounts to prompt quick decision-making and drive immediate sales
• Seasonal discounts: Use holidays or special occasions to promote your products with themed discounts
• Exclusive deals: Offer discounts exclusively to your email subscribers to make them feel special and valued
• Bundle discounts: Encourage larger purchases by offering discounts on product bundles or multi-item orders
• Loyalty discounts: Reward repeat customers with special discounts to increase brand loyalty

3. Upsell and cross-sell your products

Upselling nudges customers toward buying a higher-end product, while ecommerce cross-selling recommends complementary products. However, targeting existing customers with both upselling and cross-selling approaches can significantly increase your revenue.

Here are several strategies for identifying upsell opportunities:

• Purchase history: Analyze what customers have bought and offer related premium products
• Behavior tracking: Use tools to see what products they browse frequently and tailor your offers accordingly
• Create different versions of deals: Consider bundle offers and product upgrades to entice customers to spend more

Cross-selling strategies:

• Identify complementary products: Look for products that naturally go together, such as selling phone cases to someone who just bought a phone
• Bundle offers to boost sales: Create packages that combine complementary products at a discounted rate so the customer feels inclined to spend more

One of Omnisend’s clients, a fashion retailer, successfully implemented cross-selling in its post-purchase emails. It included personalized product recommendations based on the customer’s recent purchase, resulting in a 15% increase in the recovered revenue rate.

4. Use customer lifecycle maps

Mapping the customer lifecycle provides valuable insights into your customers’ behaviors, preferences, and needs at each stage of their journey. With this information you can craft highly relevant and timely messages that resonate with your audience.

For example, you can create a welcome series for new subscribers, abandoned cart reminders for potential customers, and loyalty rewards for repeat buyers.

By tailoring your communication strategy to each lifecycle stage, you can nurture leads more effectively, boost conversion rates, and build long-term customer relationships. These mapping tools also help you identify potential pain points or drop-off areas in the customer journey, enabling you to address these issues and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Omnisend’s customer lifecycle map is a powerful feature that helps businesses enhance personalization in email marketing. This feature allows you to visualize and understand your customers’ journey, from their first interaction with your brand to becoming loyal repeat customers.

By leveraging the customer lifecycle map, you can:

• Segment your audience based on their stage in the customer journey
• Create targeted campaigns for each lifecycle stage
• Personalize content and offers based on customer behavior.
• Identify opportunities to re-engage inactive customers
• Optimize your marketing efforts for maximum ROI

“The lifecycle stage map is an incredible opportunity for a small business. This is the kind of thing that, otherwise, takes a marketing team to be able to do. It’s a simple way to see our customers’ shopping or purchasing habits in one place, and it’s really helped us to be able to target different groups. We’re competing with larger businesses, and this allows us to have that reach at the right time.”

Angèl Foster, Co-Owner of Island Olive Oil Company

Learn how Angèl uses Omnisend’s lifecycle stage map.

5. Automate your most important campaigns

Automation helps increase the efficiency of existing email campaigns, which is especially relevant for online stores. By setting up automated email sequences, you can ensure timely, relevant communication with your subscribers while saving time and resources.

In fact, automated emails generated 41% of all email orders in 2023, even though they only accounted for 2% of emails sent. Here are some key campaigns you can automate to streamline workflows and enhance customer interactions with your brand:

• Welcome series: Introduce new subscribers to your brand and set expectations for future communications
• Order confirmation: Provide customers with immediate confirmation of their purchase and important order details
• Abandoned cart recovery: Remind customers about items left in their cart and encourage them to complete their purchase
• Cross-sell and upsell offers: Automatically suggest related or upgraded products based on a customer’s purchase history
• Product abandonment: Re-engage customers who viewed specific products but didn’t make a purchase

“We add value to our emails. In cases of recapturing sales, we often include discounts that are showcased in subject lines, to attract the reader’s attention. User-generated content and social proof also resonate a lot with our audience. This not only incentivizes purchases but also builds a sense of community and trust”

Jeanlyn Yang, Creality

Learn how Jeanlyn made an automated cart recovery campaign that brought €560,000: How Creality recaptured abandoned carts and increased repurchase rates

Or see how to build automations even without experience.

6. Sell affiliated products

Affiliate marketing is another effective way to make money with email marketing. By promoting other companies’ products or services to your email list, you can earn commissions on resulting sales. Refer to the following steps to get started as an affiliate marketer: 

1. Sign up: Join affiliate programs like Amazon Associates, ClickBank, or ShareASale
2. Get unique affiliate links: Once approved, you’ll receive unique affiliate links to promote
3. Choose the right products to promote: Select quality products that align with your audience’s interests and needs
4. Create and share valuable content: Write informative emails highlighting the benefits of the affiliated products
5. Disclose your affiliate relationships: Be transparent with your audience about your affiliate partnerships
6. Track your performance and results: Monitor your click-through rates and conversions to optimize your affiliate marketing efforts

Remember to always prioritize your audience’s needs and only promote products you genuinely believe in to maintain trust and credibility.

7. Create and share original content

Creating valuable content can attract and retain subscribers and eventually lead to more sales. By positioning yourself as an expert in your niche through helpful content, you can build trust with your audience and increase the likelihood of conversions.

Here are some content ideas to monetize your email list:

• Lead magnets: Offer free content like checklists, templates, or mini eBooks to attract signups and showcase your expertise
• Courses: Provide free or paid courses to establish yourself as an authority, and share parts of your course via email to entice subscribers to buy the full version
• Webinars: Host live or pre-recorded webinars on topics relevant to your audience, and use email to promote and follow up on these events
• Exclusive content: Create premium content available only to paying subscribers, such as in-depth guides or monthly reports

For example, UX Content Collective uses email marketing to promote its courses and share valuable content with its audience:

8. Redirect subscribers to other websites

Monetizing your email list by redirecting subscribers to partner websites can be a valuable revenue stream for your business. When executed properly, this strategy allows you to leverage your email audience and generate additional income.

Discussed below are tips to help you:

Monetizing email traffic

Partnering with companies that pay you for sending traffic their way can open up new revenue streams for your business. These partnerships can be structured on a commission basis, with payments tied to clicks, leads, or sales generated. Negotiating the right commission structure is key to ensuring a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Choosing relevant websites for your audience

It’s imperative that you choose partner websites that align with your audience’s interests and preferences. This maintains the trust and engagement of your subscribers, as they’ll be more receptive to offers and content that are genuinely relevant to them. Focus on high-quality, reputable partners that can provide value to your email list.

Negotiating payment terms with partners

When establishing these partnerships, negotiate the payment terms carefully. Decide on a model that works best for your business, such as pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-acquisition (PPA). Leverage the size and quality of your email list to negotiate the best possible rates with your partners.

Look at Amazon’s curated round-up email, for example. It delivers curated content that leads recipients to other products and themed items listed on the site. By using email marketing to share relevant deals and shopping opportunities outside your store, you stand a greater chance of cultivating an engaged audience.

9. Sell your own AI tool

Creating and selling your own AI tool can be an innovative way to monetize your email list. With the increasing accessibility of AI technologies, even small businesses and entrepreneurs can develop useful AI-powered tools to solve specific problems for their audience.

Here are some ideas for AI tools you could create and promote through email marketing:

• AI chatbot: Develop a customizable chatbot for customer service or lead generation
• Personal financial planner: Create an AI-powered tool that helps users manage their finances and investments
• Writing coach: Build an AI assistant that helps improve writing skills and provides personalized feedback
• Image generator: Develop an AI tool that creates custom images based on user input
• Market trend analyzer: Create an AI-powered tool that predicts market trends in your niche

To get started, you can utilize existing AI platforms and APIs, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to build your tool without extensive coding knowledge. Use your email list to gather feedback, beta test your tool, and eventually launch and sell it to your audience.

10. Include social proof in emails

Incorporating social proof in your emails can go a long way in building trust and credibility, leading to increased sales from your existing email subscribers. Social proof is based on the psychological principle that people are more likely to take action when they see others doing the same.

Most consumers are more likely to trust non-paid recommendations than any other type of advertising. So, by including social proof in your emails, you can tap into this trust factor and drive more conversions.

• Customer testimonials: Share positive feedback from satisfied customers
• User-generated content: Showcase photos or videos of customers using your products
• Reviews and ratings: Highlight high ratings and positive reviews from verified purchasers
• Celebrity or influencer endorsements: Feature well-known figures who use and recommend your products
• Case studies: Share detailed success stories of how your product or service helped a customer
• Social media mentions: Include positive mentions or comments from your social media channels

Here’s an example from iRobot that showcases how the brand effectively uses social proof in its email campaigns:

By strategically incorporating these types of social proof in your emails, you can build trust, overcome objections, and ultimately drive more sales from your email subscribers.

Summary

Email marketing continues to be a powerful tool for generating revenue in 2025. From selling your own products and services to leveraging affiliate marketing and AI tools, we’ve discussed multiple ways how to make money with email marketing.

However, remember to focus on building a quality email list, creating valuable content, and maintaining trust with your subscribers. Utilize automation, personalization, and social proof to enhance the effectiveness of your campaigns.

With the right approach and the use of tools like Omnisend, you can unlock the full potential of email marketing and watch your revenue skyrocket.