How To Buy Newsletter Ads and Sponsorships (Profitably)

DEEP DIVE

Here’s how to buy newsletter sponsorships that sell your product and drive ROAS.

If you’re a marketer, this will help you make more money from newsletter ads.

If you’re a publisher, this will help you understand what marketers need so you can sell more ads and get more advertisers to renew.

1) Find and vet newsletters

This first step is to find the right newsletters to advertise in.

This is a challenge because there’s no one place to discover newsletters, get audience information, and ad rates.

I recommend:

• Start with the newsletters you read and know of

• Ask your colleagues what newsletters they enjoy

• See if your favorite creators or blogs have a newsletter

Then check out these platforms to discover more newsletters:

• Inbox Reads - Find newsletters for any topic

• Paved - Find hundreds of newsletters looking for sponsors

• Lettergrowth - 700+ newsletters looking for cross-promotions

• SparkLoop - Affiliate marketing platform for newsletters where you can see hundreds of publishers

• GrowLetter Ad Network - Service that finds and vets newsletters for you from the 300+ publishers in the network

How to vet newsletters

Buying newsletter ads based on subscriber size and topic is a common beginner mistake.

• Subscriber size doesn’t matter (much).

There are newsletters with 10,000 subscribers that will generate more traffic and sales than newsletters with 100,000+ subscribers.

Open rate, CTR, ad clicks, and audience type matter much more than the number of subscribers a newsletter has.

I recommend only buying in newsletters with a minimum audience engagement of 40%+ open rate and 3%+ CTR. Ideally more.

• The newsletter topic doesn’t matter IF they don’t have an audience that matches your ideal customer profile (ICP).

Only buy in newsletters that prove they have the audience you want to target with first-party data.

First-party data is data the newsletter publisher collects directly from their audience with surveys and forms.

Just because the topic matches what your audience cares about doesn’t mean that the newsletter will have an audience that matches your ICP.

A newsletter collecting first-party data can give you statistics on exactly who its subscribers are. This will include things like:

• Gender

• Age

• Location

• Household income

• Spending habits

• Job title and level

• Industry

• Job type

• Company size

• Company name

• Software they use

• And more

Newsletter content

Data is helpful, but you should also read the newsletter content and ask yourself:

“Is this content my ICP would read and find useful?”

Take 10-15 minutes and read the newsletter’s 2-3 most recent issues.

2) Media kit, rate card, funnel math

Reach out to the newsletters you’ve found and ask for their media kit and rate card.

This should have all the information about their audience size, engagement, audience data, and ad pricing.

After you’ve identified their audience is engaged and matches your ICP, you need to find or calculate:

• Ad rate - what it costs to buy one ad

• Estimated ad clicks - the number of unique clicks one ad drives on average

• Estimated cost per ad click (CPC) - the cost per unique click from the ad

• Cost per 1000 opens (CPM) - the cost per 1000 users to open the newsletter and see your ad

This information will help you do some basic math to determine whether this ad can drive ROAS (return on ad spend).

You’ll also need to know your numbers:

• Landing page conversion rate (LP CVR) — the percent of users that sign up or purchase after visiting your landing page

• Customer lifetime value (LTV) — the total revenue your business can expect to earn from a customer over the lifetime of the relationship

• Target cost per lead (CPL) — what you can afford to pay for a lead or sign up

• Lead to customer conversion rate (Lead CVR) — the percent of leads that convert to customers or clients

• Target customer acquisition cost (CAC) — what you can afford to pay for a new customer

Once you have all this information you can do some simple math in a spreadsheet like this.

In this example, let’s assume we have a SaaS product and we’re advertising a lead magnet in one newsletter.

• The newsletter has 10,000 subscribers

• One primary ad cost $1000 to buy

• The primary ad drives 200 unique clicks

If our business has:

• 20% landing page CVR for our lead magnet

• 10% lead to customer CVR

• $1,000 customer LTV

Then:

• This ad will generate 40 leads at a $25 CPL

• We’ll convert those leads into 4 customers at a $250 CAC

• We’ll generate $1,000 from each of those customers ($1,000 LTV)

• Our total lifetime revenue generated from the ad will be $4,000

• Which gives us a 400% or 4X return on ad spend (ROAS)

Of course, this is just a simple example. Every business will have different metrics and different ways to convert ad clicks into revenue.

The important thing is that you outline your “funnel math” in a spreadsheet like this.

Note: Many times, newsletters will give you a range of numbers for ad clicks.

Like “200-400 ad clicks”.

When doing your funnel math, pick the number on the lower end of that range. It’s better to be conservative when doing estimates like this.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

3) Buy the right ad placement

When buying ads for the first time, I highly recommend starting with primary ads.

Primary ads are the main ad that are placed in the top 20-30% of the email.

Most newsletters have 1 or 2 ad placements per send:

• 1 primary ad

• 1-2 secondary ads

Secondary ads cost less but drive fewer clicks and impressions.

I only recommend buying secondary ads if you've already succeeded with primary ads in that same newsletter.

4) Negotiations

You can almost always get 10% or 20% off if you ask the right questions to newsletter publishers:

• Can you give a discount if I buy multiple ads?

• Do you have a discount for first-time advertisers?

• What discount can you provide if we give you our product for free?

• Do you have remanent ad inventory that you can sell for less? (This means ad inventory going live this or next week that probably won't get sold)

Always negotiate the price down (unless you’re working with an agency like GrowLetter Ad Network that does this for you).

5) One ad is a waste of money

Don’t buy one ad in a newsletter and expect it to work.

Your brand is being introduced to this audience for the first time. They need to see you a few times before taking action.

• Marketers know prospects need to see your brand 5-7 times before becoming a lead or customer.

• However, many times, marketers don't consider this when buying newsletter advertising.

If you’re on a tight budget, buy at least 2-3 ads for any newsletter you test. Ideally, 3-5.

Buying 2-5 ads will also allow you to get a package discount of 10% to 30% off.

6) Smaller newsletters often work better

Newsletters with 10,000 to 50,000 subscribers and great engagement often drive better ROAS than big industry-leading newsletters with hundreds of thousands or millions of subscribers.

Why?

• Ad rates are lower

• They have fewer advertisers. You’re a higher priority to them

• Lock in bigger discounts when buying packages or campaigns

• Their audiences are often more engaged, more valuable, and care more about the newsletter creators’ opinions and endorsements

• They’re open to outside-the-box campaigns and can offer more sponsorship options, like dedicated sends, sponsored posts, webinars, etc

7) Buy from thought leaders and creators

Let’s be honest: There are a ton of newsletters with big email lists and good open rates that fail to drive advertisers results.

• There are many ways to game email list growth and open rate.

• Some newsletters even lie or exaggerate the numbers in their media kits.

So, how do you tell who’s legit and who’s not?

Look and see if this newsletter is a genuine thought leader in their industry or niche!

Here’s how:

Social followers and engagement

If a newsletter has 100,000+ subscribers but less than <1000 social followers, it’s likely people don't really care about their content — they just grew an email list using paid ads.

Also, look at engagement — likes, comments, and shares. Social followers can be gamed, too.

You need to see if people are actually engaging with their content.

Accomplishments, work, features, and awards

Find out:

• Has this newsletter creator or publisher been featured on other websites/blogs?

• Do they have a background working at successful companies in this industry?

• Do they have testimonials or reviews for their newsletter or products?

• Do people say positive things about them on social media?

• Are they a well-known and respected creator or brand?

• Have they hosted an event and sold tickets?

• Have they been interviewed on podcasts?

• Have they received any awards?

• Have they spoken at events?

If the newsletter creator or publisher has at least 1-2 of these things, it’s a good sign that people actually care about their content and perspective.

8) Get an expert to do all this for you

Buying and managing ad campaigns across 5-10+ newsletters can amount to the work of a full-time job.

Marketers need to:

• Find and vet the best newsletters to buy in.

• Negotiate, make creative, optimize landing pages, send payment, track down ad reports across multiple publishers, and more.

• Do this across dozens of newsletters to scale.

Unfortunately, most marketers are just too busy to grow with newsletters effectively.

At GrowLetter, we’re changing this.

We help marketers:

• Buy targeted ads across dozens of high-quality and vetted email newsletters.

• Scale your newsletter ads without the hassle of managing campaigns, negotiations, ad creative, reporting, and payments across multiple publishers.

• Manage your ENTIRE newsletter advertising campaigns from A to Z – while increasing your ROAS and saving you time.

• Buy across many niches, small newsletters with 10k-50k subscribers that most Marketers don’t have time to handle.

Everything is white glove and tailored to your needs.

Check out how it works and set up a free newsletter ad strategy call here:

Or, if you’re a newsletter publisher/creator, apply for us to sell ads for you with our commission-only and non-exclusive service.