Low-cost traffic features: push notifications, teasers, email marketing, and seeding

Advertising networks, email newsletters, and seeding are inexpensive sources of traffic that can bring excellent profits with a small budget. In this material, we’ll talk about the tricks of inexpensive traffic, provide tips and insights that will help in your campaign. Don't forget to bookmark the article and review it before working with inexpensive sources.

Push advertising features

Push notifications are notifications that appear on the user's mobile device or PC screen. Push notifications come in several varieties, which can be configured depending on the operating system. For example, on Android devices, push notifications look like pop-up notifications, while on iOS, they can appear as In-Page push notifications, taking up the entire screen, or as Calendar push notifications from the calendar.

Push notifications are well-suited for nutra and allow for quick lead generation while facilitating dynamic testing.

Here are some recommendations and insights for working with push notifications:

• Concise and clear creatives. Since push notifications appear quickly and look like short messages, it's important to convey the essence of the benefits in 1-2 concise theses. If a news-oriented approach is used, you can include one striking headline. The most important information should be in the first few words to entice the user to click.
• Show to recent subscribers. The fresher the audience, the better. Some advertising networks have settings based on the freshness level of the audience, such as those who subscribed today, three days ago, a week ago, two weeks ago, and so on. If you show ads to those who subscribed a long time ago, there's a higher risk that it's a burned-out audience.
• High-quality testing. Push networks recommend creating at least 2 campaigns with 2 ad variations, but it's even better to create more, at least 10. Creatives can burn out within a few days. If targeting options are limited, you can compensate by having a large volume. Since the cost of push advertising is relatively low compared to social media, you can test large volumes.
• Choosing the CPC model for testing and switching to CPM for scaling. Paying for clicks during testing helps reduce the risk of budget loss, as the CPC model is more predictable. Once you have initial results and an understanding of which creatives convert, you can switch to CPM and start saving on clicks.
• Optimization. Many advertising networks offer smart optimization algorithms that can optimize budget spending and conversions. It's important not to overlook these tools.
• Timely formation of blacklists and whitelists. It's crucial to monitor the performance of platforms – which ones are generating leads and which ones are consuming your budget without delivering results. Ineffective websites should be added to blacklists. Premium audience lists, whitelists, can be requested from network managers.
• Testing schedules. Finding the right time to display ads when people are actively online and looking at the screen is important. If a person sees your ad as soon as it's launched, there's a higher likelihood that the creative will achieve its goal compared to when the user views notifications later.

The features of banner, teaser, and native advertising

Advertising networks, in addition to push notifications, offer the option to configure advertising creatives in the form of banners, teasers, or to create native integrations within the content on publisher platforms. Banners can be in the form of static images or include animations.

This format, like push notifications, is also beneficial for nutra. People often make purchases influenced by emotions, and teaser and news-oriented approaches, as well as storytelling, can evoke such relevant emotions. Banner, teaser, and native networks typically have lenient moderation policies, and some even allow adult content.

Here are some recommendations and insights for working with banner, teaser, and native advertising: 

• Choice of format. For example, if an arbitrageur decides to use banners, it's important for the advertising to be warming and engaging, rather than direct, as banners are often seen by cold audiences. It's better to place news or provide value in the banner to spark interest and encourage users to click through to the pre-landing page or landing page.
• Banners and placements. Some networks allow you to choose specific placements for your ads. It's advisable to select placements where there are no competing ads from competitors next to your creative. If a user sees multiple banners stacked together, banner blindness may occur, and they might not pay attention to any of the creatives.
• Concise design.  Avoid adding too much flashy animation or blinking to your banner, as it can be irritating and lead users to close the ad. Also, don't cram a lot of tiny text onto a small banner, it’ll be difficult for users to read.
• Readability. The text font should be large enough and preferably without serifs, as serifs can hinder readability. To test if users can read the text, step back from the screen about 2 meters and try to read what's written on your banner.
• Selecting the optimal video length. For video ads or animated creatives, aim for a length of up to 7 seconds. Longer advertisements are rarely watched. Place the most important information within the first 3-4 seconds to capture the audience's attention.
• Consider Internet speed. In some regions, such as Tier-3 countries, there may be issues with internet connectivity, so it's important to consider the banner's file size. The optimal size is up to 150 KB. This way, the ad will load much faster.

Features of mailings

You can configure email, SMS, and messenger message mailings. Mass mailing works based on volume: it reaches many people from the database at once. For the arbitrageur to gather such a database, it's important for users to give their consent to receive messages.

Email campaigns are excellent for promoting nutra offers among an older audience—those who don't use messengers. On the other hand, Telegram, WhatsApp, and Viber mailings are ideal for a younger audience.

An important point: be sure to consult with your manager to see if the specific advertiser allows the use of mailings for your offer. Some advertisers may not be ready to accept such traffic.

Here are some recommendations and insights for working with mailings: 

• Text length depending on the mailing type. For email campaigns, you can develop fairly long warming texts, provide more valuable information, and create visually appealing designs. For messenger mailings, prepare short texts, maximum of 1000 characters including spaces. If you decide to use images in your messages, it's important to optimize their size so that users' devices can open and load the email.
• Planning and creating a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a gift offered in exchange for a subscription. It should be related to the offer's topic. For example, if the offer is related to weight loss, the lead magnet could be a well-designed checklist with valuable tips on achieving a slim figure.
• Managing the base. Regularly review your subscriber base for inactive subscribers and remove their addresses from the mailing list to avoid wasting your budget. Additionally, people should have the option to unsubscribe.
• Monetization. You can use mailings to encourage those who are taking their time or haven't made a purchase yet. In your email, you can remind them of special offers, discounts, or mention that the stock of a particular product is running out.
• Working with the audience.  It's important to segment your audience and warm up each segment with its own series of messages. Warm up the audience with emails introducing them to the offer, providing useful tips, explaining the benefits of the offer, and then leading them to the landing page.
• Incorporating video.  Video captures more attention. You can mention in the email subject that there's valuable free video content inside that will bring specific benefits to the viewer.
• Adaptive design. Since most people use mobile devices, emails and messages should be designed specifically for mobile screens.

Seeding features

Seeding is an inexpensive form of advertising on social media, where an arbitrageur seeks out administrators of social media accounts and channels, negotiates with them to publish their advertisements. This approach has clear advantages: no intermediaries, no need to pass through moderation, and the potential to obtain cheap traffic.

Seeding can be used on nearly all social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and others. To find contact information for channel owners, you can directly visit their profiles and send them messages, or you can use platforms like Epicstars and similar services.

Here are some recommendations and insights for working with seeding:

• Negotiation is appropriate. Since you communicate directly with the channel or community administrator, you can always negotiate the price, as there are no fixed rates. You can offer bulk advertising placements to lower the cost per post.
• Use of influencers in advertising.  If the arbitrageur has arranged a deal with the administrator of a channel with a large audience who is also a blogger, you can run advertisements on their behalf. Audiences tend to trust bloggers they follow more than unknown companies and brands.
• Analyzing the administrator/channel author's statistics. It's advisable to request data on numbers, key performance indicators, marketing KPIs from the person from whom you want to buy advertising. You can use analytical services to view audience activity and analyze the target audience to see if it aligns with the offer's target audience.
• Selecting platforms without advertising. It's preferable to publish seedings where there isn't an excessive amount of advertising. In such cases, the audience tends to be more receptive. In channels or communities where advertising appears daily in large quantities, the audience may experience banner blindness, or people might simply ignore the channel or community.
• Choosing platforms with moderate posting frequencies. If the channel owner posts frequently, for example, five times a day, your advertising may get lost quickly and reach fewer people. However, you can negotiate with such channel owners to place your ad in a top-pinned post.

Conclusion

If you don't have a large budget, you can utilize sources such as advertising networks, email campaigns, and seeding to achieve a substantial profit, similar to what you might achieve with Facebook. We’ve provided some recommendations and valuable advice on how to effectively use these cost-effective traffic sources.