Sponsorships.com Newsletter Agency

For Newsletter publishers

We help newsletter operators earn more revenue through sponsorships. We run newsletter sponsorship campaigns for brands, and we're on the lookout for more top level newsletters to include in our campaigns.By partnering with us, you’ll receive additional sponsorships revenue with no upfront cost and simplified sponsor relationship management.

How it Works

We are a newsletter marketing agency that works with notable brands who are looking to leverage the exceptional ROI that direct relationship sponsorships deliver, by providing them with an end-to-end service that handles every aspect of a marketing campaign.Our clients provide us with a budget and a campaign target, and our expert team draft a campaign strategy, selecting the right newsletters whose audience match the targeted goal, manage the scheduling, copy, editing, payments and reporting with each chosen newsletter publisher, and then package it all into a complete campaign for the client.

Become an Agency Partner

When crafting a campaign for a client, we consider all Partner audiences to figure which one is best suited for the client's goal. If you're one of our Partners, that means that we will periodically reach out to sponsor your newsletter on behalf of our clients, when the audience and other factors are a fit.

What are the Fees?

There are no upfront fees at all. Instead, when we work together on a campaign and sponsor your newsletter, we charge a commission fee of 33%.

• Apply for Partnership

Newsletter Sponsorships as a Marketing Channel

why and how you should run them

The tl;dr is that if you find the right channel within the channel, you’ll get crazy high ROAS - 5-10x or even more (see here for a real example of a 400x return). The reason boils down to the simple fact that newsletter subscriber leads are 10x more likely to convert to being buyers/users of your product service, than typical social media paid ad leads.As a marketer (or a founder with their marketing hat on) you’re always looking for the most efficient marketing channel that will drive leads for your business. Most successful entrepreneurs find one or two channels that work for them, and then double, triple and quadruple down on that. Newsletters are that channel for some businesses - read on to figure out how to figure out if they’re right for you.

what is newsletter marketing?

(Digital) Newsletters are basically emails - you get an email with a bunch of words and links, sometimes with fancy design.You probably subscribe to one or more yourself. It’s important to note that we’re not talking about email list - like those from ecom and other brands, selling you a product or service - rather, we’re focusing on a personal relationship between you (the reader) and the writer (which may be an individual, like Lenny’s Newsletter (500,000 subscribers), or it may be a brand like the New York Times).Most newsletters are free, and of those many monetise by partnering with brands for sponsorships - where the brand’s product or service is highlighted with the newsletter post.IMPORTANT: There are two other types of ads that fall within the newsletter marketing channel - programmatic ads and affiliate marketing. These are basically the same model that has existed for decades in the content site/blog and social media spaces, and are not addressed here.

why is newsletter marketing special?

Because it ticks a lot of boxes for marketers, that other channels don’t. The inbox is a sacred space - people hate spam and they don’t give out their email easily - certainly not as quickly as liking or following an instagram post. The inbox is quiet - there’s only one piece of content to focus on, no enticing feed, no flashing videos and “follow this account” distractions, no notifications and replies to break the flow.In that quiet environment, a sponsored ad meets an engaged audience and the quality of the conversion (the likelihood of it being acted upon) is exponentially higher.When you layer on the fact that many newsletters are written by writers with a strong personal brand, who build long term, trusted relationships with their readers - then those conversions move much further up the quality scale.Many newsletters center around a specific topic or niche, and consequently have a highly homogeneous cohort makeup within the audience - this allows for tailored targeting.Finally, newsletter leads are easily trackable and attributable - an advantage over other forms of sponsorships, like events and podcasts.Important Note: there are many budget options too - from $100 per sponsorship to $10k and everything in between. In our experience, newsletter marketing is not a first step channel - nor is it for the budget conscious. It’s for the growth minded, with a budget and a vision, looking to iterate and grow a product that has traction in the market.

how to test newsletter marketing for your business

A few things you have to know before you begin:1. Focus on the bottom of the funnel metrics only. Whilst there are newsletters with millions of subs that can be used to build brand awareness, there is precious little data on its efficacy due to the immaturity of the market. On the other hand, when it comes to pure conversions, there are many strong case studies across niches.
 
2. As a rule of thumb, higher ticket products and services are best suited, especially in a B2B context. If you’re looking to sell low priced ecom to a general consumer audience, the channel doesn’t translate well. If you’re looking to sell high priced ecom products (eg. eight sleep), business or enterprise SaaS, or sophisticated high ticket services (consulting, education), then the channel is likelier to work for you.
 
3. Your strategy should be to find one or two newsletters that work for you, and then triple down on them. We’ll expand on this below.
 
4. You have to be aware of the pitfalls common to the industry. We’ll point them out below as well.

1st Step: FIND

Find newsletters in the niche you’re looking for. Here are some options:Sponsor This Newsletter (been around for a while)
newsletters.co (been around for a while)
Sponsorfrog (very new)You can also google and do some general research on 𝕏 around your niche - you’ll generally find some interesting options that way.

2nd Step: EVALUATE

Subscribe to your shortlist of newsletters. Check out their sponsorship pages (if they don’t have one, pass), learn about their tone, demographic makeup of audience, price options, etc. Beware of these pitfalls - many newsletter publishers advertise a specific number of subscribers, the average open rate, the average number of clicks and so on. This is a spot rife with both dishonesty as well as incompetence. On the dishonesty front, some publishers simply pump up the numbers of incompetence - many publishers never unsubscribe unengaged subscribers (those who barely ever open, or if they do, barely click). These subscribers are highly unlikely to purchase your product, but you’re still paying to reach them. Many publishers also have bots on their list, because they obtain subscribers through low quality methods (e.g., they’ll run X ads to an Indian audience, paying peanuts to obtain subs) - but those subs will never purchase from you.The solution - to begin with you can counteract this by asking for screenshots of their metrics. Ask them how they obtained subscribers - and do some due diligence on that - if they ran ads on Facebook, try to get a look at those ads - you’ll learn a lot about the quality of subs they obtained. Most important - ask for case studies, with non anonymous names attached. The best green flag is when a publisher proudly shows those, ideally upfront before you even ask. A heuristic: when the newsletter is intimately tied with the publisher’s personal brand, these concerns are far less.

3rd Step: TEST

Choose the best newsletter from your shortlist. Buy at least 4 slots, preferably 5. Most publishers offer a package deal, i.e. a bulk discount. If they don’t ask for one. The reason is simple - buyers need multiple exposures to your offer, and a one off won’t give enough signal.Many newsletters have different levels of sponsorship options: a “Primary Ad”, which has the greatest spotlight, and various variations of secondary ads, classified, link, PS shoutout, all with different criteria (copy word limits, images or not etc). All of these options create confusion and make testing difficult - stick to Primary unless a different scenario is obvious.Wait for at least 7 days after the first sponsorship runs, then get the metrics from the publisher. You’ll see how many impressions were made (not so important) and how many clicks your CTA’s got (important!) - on your end, you should be tracking conversions. At this point, you’ll have a small idea of how things are going, but now you have to wait for all ads to run,a nd then wait a couple of weeks (really depends on your subjective conversion cycle) to see how you did.Next step: depends on the results from the 1st step. If the campaign was very positive, then negotiate a long term deal with that publisher. Especially if they have a large and growing subscriber base - once you know your offer resonates with them, it’s worthwhile getting in front of them again and again, iterating on the copy. Some readers may be a t different point of their buying journey and open to your offer in three months, others will be on Sabbatical and return in five months, others may just be overwhelmed with work and only ready to listen in eight months - but you can be confident that they’ll buy.If the campaign was negative or neutral, or not competitive versus other marketing channels you run, then just repeat the test on the remainder of your newsletter shortlist. If all don’t work out, then you’re better off exploring other channels.

OUTSOURCE THIS ALL TO US!

At the Sponsorships.com Newsletter Agency, we can do all of the work outlined above for you. After learning about your business and marketing goals, we'll present you with a list of newsletters that fit your goals and budget, and we'll assist you at every step of the campaign, handling payments, scheduling and copy.

• Learn more about this offer