đ Hello newsletter enthusiasts,
Monetizing your newsletter through sponsorships can be tough, especially when it comes to determining how much to charge.
To help, we conducted a deep dive across 10 different newsletters with subscriber counts ranging from ~3,000 to ~1M+ across various industries.
We want to provide a resource to assist you with sponsorship pricing.
Researching rates of comparable newsletters in your niche can help you establish a competitive price that reflects the value you can offer to advertisers.
Keep in mind that there isn't a one-size-fits-all formula for calculating how much to charge.
We hope this information provides you with more insight to make data-informed decisions.
đŸ Thank you for reading, stay pawsome.
To find a level set across newsletters and ad units, we define a âPrimaryâ sponsorship as one that may have a logo in the email header, or be prominently featured. If there are multiple ad units available for sponsorship, this tends to be the most expensive one.
These ad units varied from $262-$18,000, with an average ~$3,635.
Again, the subscriber count, audience engagement, industry niche, etc. for the newsletter factor into the cost of a sponsorship.
From the 10 newsletters we analyzed, their Open Rate varied from 45% to 57%. Again, take with a grain of salt due to Apple Mail Privacy Protection.
Letâs drill down into a more reliable metric: Clicks.
Some newsletters provided an estimated number of clicks for ads.
Relevancy of the ad plays a big role and there isnât a formula to identify the exact number of clicks an ad will receive, but if you run ads for a bit and are ensuring the content is aligning with your audience, you will start to see a ballpark range. This will take time and learnings will be found.
Letâs dive deeper among some metrics. Weâll start with some definitions to ensure weâre on the same page:
Click-Through Rate = The # of Clicks / # of emails delivered.
Since we donât know the # of emails delivered, we will calculate a Click-to-Open Rate.
Click-to-Open Rate = # of Clicks / # of emails opens.
We are able to calculate this for some newsletters because they shared the number of subscribers and the Open Rate. Some newsletters also shared Click-Through Rate or # of estimated Clicks for an ad, which is helpful.
Ad Click-Through Rate = # of Clicks / # of Impressions or Opens. We acknowledge Click-Through Rate can be confusing since CTR in email is different than Ad CTR. We hope these definitions helps!
CPM (Cost-per-1,000 impressions) = Price of sponsorship / # of subscribers x 1,000.
CPC (Cost-per-Click) = The cost-per-click. For the newsletters that provided an estimated number of clicks it was oftentimes as a range (2,500-4,500 estimated clicks).
This helps understand the âfloorâ and âceilingâ of engagement. For our visuals, we went with an average of this range.
As we highlighted in our guide to sponsorships:
*Some newsletters were not included in the below calculations because essential metrics were not available.
Whoa. Thatâs a big range.
Letâs bring in some visuals.
From left to right, we start with the highest number of subscribers and get smaller as we go right.
As you can see, TLDR has a high number of subscribers (~1M) and is the most expensive (~$18,000).
Two that jump out are Harryâs Newsletter (Marketing Examples) and Houckâs Newsletter.
The spikes reflect a high cost for their Primary sponsorship, and it is not correlated with their subscriber count.
Looking at the number of subscribers compared to the cost of a Primary sponsorship, they tend to float in the first quadrant. TLDR is an outlier being at the top right-hand corner of the chart.
Taking out TLDR from the chart:
Zooming inâŠ
Most newsletters float in this first quadrant with a Primary sponsorship cost below $1,000 and less than 50,000 subscribers.
As you know, subscriber count is not the only thing that factors into sponsorship pricing.
Letâs keep going.
The chart continues to read from highest subscriber count on the left to lowest on the right.
The cost per 1,000 impressions varies.
Harryâs Newsletter (Marketing Examples) and Houckâs Newsletter have some of the highest CPMs.
JustAnotherPM is the highest at ~$87, Superhuman is the lowest at ~$9.99.
Visualizing CPM, we can see that it varies:
Zooming inâŠ
Most ads had a CPM in this quadrant.
Primary sponsorship cost less than ~$2,500 with a CPM ~$25.
This was regardless of the # of email subscribers. They tend to float in this quadrant.
The chart continues to read from highest subscriber count on the left to lowest on the right.
Several newsletters provided a range for their estimated number of clicks. We took an average of the range for CPC calculation.
The Cost-per-Click for some newsletters could not be calculated because an estimated number of clicks was not available.
This calculation is an estimation since we donât know how the ad will perform, but based on the cost of the Primary sponsorship and the estimated number of clicks an ad may receive. This results in our CPC.
Ad Click-Through Rate can be helpful to determine the likelihood of someone clicking an ad.
Itâs calculated by taking the # of Clicks / # of email opens. We made estimates based off of the Open Rate provided. The # of Clicks was provided as a range, so we took the average of the range.
Zooming inâŠ
Most ads had a Click-Through rate in this quadrant.
The Primary sponsorship cost less than ~$2,500 with an Ad Click-Through rate ~2%.
This was regardless of the # of email subscribers. They tend to float in this quadrant.
Zooming inâŠ
Another interesting observation is that for the newsletters that provided their estimated number of clicks for an ad, they tend to be in this quadrant.
Charging ~$2,500 or less, and receiving less than 1,050 clicks on an ad.
This was regardless of subscriber count.
For newsletter ranging from 3,000 to over a million in subscriber count, the idea that a lot of them float in this quadrant is interesting.
It could mean that there are only so many clicks an ad will probably yield.
This could be because of reader savviness.
They know itâs an ad, and they tend to gloss over them. Or there are always readers that tend to engage with ads throughout newsletters. But there seems to be a âcrestâ for the amount of engagement on an email ad.
CPM and CPC can be helpful metrics for a sponsor if theyâre advertising across various channels.
This can vary depending on industry, spend, location, ad format, etc. when looking at benchmarks:
If we compare to Google Ads, according to Store Growers:
âOn average, advertisers pay $2.69 per click on Search Ads, while the average CPC for Display Ads is $0.63.â
A key metric to know is the actual conversion from a channel. Which we donât.
CPC and CPM is one way to try and look at advertising spend across channels.
Again, a lot of factors at play.
If you noticed the CPC in Superhuman is $15, you may think thatâs expensive compared to Google Ads.
If you peel the onion one layer more, youâll discover that a sponsorship in a newsletter may give you less clicks, but might convert more compared to other channels.
Overall, these metrics help newsletter operators and advertisers make informed decisions about ad campaigns, to optimize ad content and targeting and to achieve the best possible ROI on advertising spend. While hopefully providing value to readers!
Calculating CPM and CPC for email newsletter ads can be tough since subscriber counts, Open rates, and Click-Through rates can vary greatly.
However, we did find that the average CPM for a Primary sponsorship is ~$35, and the average CPC ~$5.50.
Interestingly, we also found that email newsletters tend to offer more flexible and negotiable rates compared to social media ads. This is likely due to the fact that email newsletters are often owned and operated by individuals, rather than large corporations.
Another important point to consider was the lack of transparency in terms of metrics provided by some newsletters. While some newsletters provided detailed metrics on Open rates and Click-Through rates, others only provided vague estimates or none at all.
If you would like to explore our Figma board which highlights the various newsletters above, along with example sponsorships, rates, etc. Click the link below!
Want us to deep dive on a newsletter? Or maybe feature your newsletter in an upcoming newsletter? Email us.
đ Thanks for joining the pack of newsletter enthusiasts! Keep on reading, writing and sharing your newsletters with the world.
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