Sponsorship question
Hi all 👋
I'm looking into arranging some sponsorship for my site remotecircle.com and newsletter and wondered if anybody had any advice on best practices for approaching sponsors? It's not something I've ever done before. My main questions are:
I would like to put ads on my site for the sponsor and wondered if I should include email sponsorship in the sponsorship "package" too or keep them separate?
What are some normal durations for a sponsorship deal? Ideally I would like to get a single sponsor for a 3-6 month period to save having to constantly find new sponsors.
How do you determine cost?
What do you need to provide to potential sponsors? e.g. proof of traffic etc.
If anybody has any tips on any of the above, that would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
#ask-ih
Hi Joshua,
So just last week I got a good long term sponsor (EmailOctopus) for my marketing examples site. And yeah, in setting it up I certainly thought about these every single one of these questions. Let me go through them. As well as everything else I know about sponsorships!
Reason being is because that will massively minimise your work. You'll just be dealing with one point person and not 5 different companies all asking you for different things and to tweak the messaging every few weeks.
My duration is 3 months. And then we review it. If you're sites growing fast best stick to three months. Cause then there's the possibility of asking for more money next time ...
With cost you make it up as you go along. There's no playbook. Just charge what you think your worth. 5000 email subscribers can mean so many different things. The Open rate could b 50% or 10%. The audience might all be CTO's or they might all be wall punchers etc ...
I think you can get stuck with low ball offers from small time waster companies though. And our better off writing quality emails to bigger companies. I'd also advise meeting in real life. My sponsor came from knowing the COO in real life and him backing me. So I'd try and go to meetups and stuff or expand your circle. It's all who you know!
If there is a playbook check out PatWalls YouTube. He is open with metrics and how much Klaviyo pays him.
For example, on my email newsletter I even say "if you want a hand with setting up EmailOctopus, just drop me an email". I don't mind doing that because I like them.
Anyway, that's enough ramblings for now. Good luck!
Wow! Those are some great insights. Thanks so much for sharing. It's encouraging to hear you were in a similar position and have managed to secure sponsorship. One other thing I meant to ask as well. Is there anything that you need to provide to potential sponsors? e.g. proof of traffic etc.
Thanks again :)
Hi Harry,
Thank you very much for these great tips! and by the way, I am a huge fan of marketing examples.
I am not sure if I will get a reply back since this post is 4 years old but I will try my luck!
Can I ask about the mechanics of actually asking for a sponsorship?
The approach that I am about to follow is to prepare a proposal offer in an official letter head where I address my potential sponsor company and propose a 3-month sponsorship deal to them. I will offer them two packages and attach some twitter analytics of my account that I want them to sponsor and some website traffic figures to support my position. I will attach this as a pdf file in an email and send it to them.
After they reply to my email accepting one of the packages, I will send them a contract to sign and ask them for the payment to be fully deposited in advance. Is that a good approach in your opinion? Can you elaborate on your approach with EmailOctopus, please?
Many thanks!
Bumping this to hopefully get a response, since I'm in a similar position... lol
What are the most important metrics to track and show to potential sponsors, number of page views or?
So I showed:
but they never really seemed to care. And as far as I'm aware it's the same with Pat Walls and Klaviyo. They just let him get on with it. You want to get a sponsor who trusts you and isn't bothered about your analytics every week ...
Honestly, try and make a human connection somehow. And win them over with your personality. People buy people.
I write a weekly newsletter (FR) "le Courrier du hacker" with 98 issues and more than 2k subscribers. My 1st sponsor asked me about:
I provided stats each week to let him know how his banner was performing. IMO you have to be as straightforward and transparent as possible. If it does not work, he'll think the sponsorship did not work but you are professional. If it works you could get a great business partner and long time sponsor.
Thanks for the advice there. Some great suggestions there!
would love to get some insights on this! Following this one
I'd say it depends on how you are growing e.g I launched last week and got a sponsor for my first two newsletters and now the list is ten times bigger, haha. So now I'm doing week to week unless someone makes me an offer I can't refuse for a month etc
For that reason I would be cautious about striking long-term deals when you are growing as your value will increase over that time if all goes to plan.
I also have an open page so people can see my traffic: www.nocsdegree.com/open
Makes a lot of sense. Thanks Pete! Think I need to find a middle ground of not too long and not too short a length of sponsorship. Need to reduce my admin time but the list can grow pretty fast too so I totally take your point. Thanks again!
no worries!