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11 Comments

Newsletter sponsorship thoughts

The first newsletter I sponsored was The Slice, for just $10. That got me 8 mailing list signups.

So next I tried Indie Letters, for $50. That got me one product signup and another 8 mailing list signups.

While that was a good educational experience I'm done with newsletter sponsorship. Content marketing and participating in online discussions proved a far more effective marketing channel for me.

Other than the costs, sponsoring a newsletter is abour a half hour work. Additionally, unfortunately it seems to be industry standard that newsletters won't send you an invoice.

  1. 3

    I've actually had some decent success from sponsoring newsletters in the past. They might not have a huge number of hits, but they allow you to target people based on their interested very well, meaning you can get pretty good conversion. Here's my stats from the last month comparing social links to a newsletter ad.

    Twitter | 289 visitors | 36 sign ups | 11% conversion
    Newsletter sponsorship | 49 visitors | 25 sign ups | 47% conversion

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    Other than the costs, sponsoring a newsletter is abour a half hour work.

    How so? What sort of legwork is required?

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      You have to prepare a graphic that fits the newsletter's format, write copy that fits in the character limit, fill out the form and pay. Around half an hour.

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    This fascinates me as someone who runs a newsletter, I'm quick to invoice just so it is less a of a headache on my end. I am surprised to hear that that's not common!

  4. 1

    Jumping into the discussion here - i founded Sponsorgap couple months ago and going through newsletters every day looking for companies buying sponsorships. What is a bit surprising is that there are almost cero ads that are a bit creative, telling a story or outstanding in a positive way. I think a good partnership with a newsletter, website or podcast owner can be very good fit for both sides but it needs a bit more then just a link to the product. Not sure if I am wrong here so happy about your feedback.

  5. 1

    Turning this around a little, what kind of subscriber base would you need to charge others for sponsored listings in your newsletter?

  6. 1

    @akfaew when I went onto Syften website, the pricing was shown in Indian Rupees which was great. May I know how you manage to show the pricing in local currency?

    Do you also mind sharing how your product was written and marketed on the newsletters ? The writing can sometimes make a huge difference.

  7. 1

    I completely agree with you.

    I also runed sponsorships on my newsletter, but, my sponsorships is paid through Paddle.

    So you actually get an invoice.
    You can see it here.

    After filling up the form, it takes you to.

    Then you can pay for what you reserved.

    To get signups you must sponsor s huge one...like densediscovery.com or sidebar.io...

  8. 1

    You should be able to get an invoice if you ask - that's bad practise on newsletter creators' part.

    I would say sponsoring is best when you have a reasonably priced product.

    1. 2

      I agree with @petecodes . Irrespective of the service/product, giving an invoice is a must. It could just even be a piece of word document converted to PDF with the invoice details.

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