beehiiv x Atria: How to Make Winning Newsletter Ads With AI

Ads, ads, ads.

Everybody wants ads.

In 2023, global digital ad spending reached $626 billion. 

By 2026, it’s expected to reach $835 billion.

There’s no doubt that digital ads work.

But, the problem is…

Most people don’t know how to run newsletter ads.

And, even if they know how to run them, they usually take too long to create.

The solution?

1. Leverage artificial intelligence with Atria to create winning ads.

2. Use the beehiiv Ad Network to find hundreds of premium newsletters to partner with.

In this guide, we’ll break down:

• How to create a winning ad strategy

• The anatomy of an effective advertisement

• How to use Atria’s AI software to fast-track your ad creation time

• How to use beehiiv’s network of premium newsletters to multiply your ad earnings

What Are Newsletter Ad Sponsorships?

Newsletter ads are advertisements you can place in other people's email newsletters.

If you’re looking to grow your revenue, there are dozens of ways you can advertise, including newsletter ads.

You pay newsletter operators to place your ad in their newsletter. Then, they send out their regular newsletter with your ad placed inside. And, this goes out to their list of subscribers who opted into their marketing messages. 

Why does it work so well?

You get to reach a targeted, niche, engaged group of people.

The newsletter operator has built relationships through trust with their subscribers. And you, as the advertiser, get to tap into that trust to generate sales for your company.

You can sign up for newsletter ads in three forms: 

• Visual banners

• Inline text content

• A full, dedicated email message

Newsletter ad formats range from static images and GIFs to interactive HTML, each with different purposes and applications.

Now that you know what newsletter ads are and how they can help you grow your brand, let’s talk about how you can create your newsletter ads so you can start tapping into new revenue streams.

Planning Your Newsletter Ad Strategy (5 Simple Steps)

Before you start whipping up ads to place in a bunch of different newsletters, you need to do a bit of planning.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. 

This is true in everything in life — especially newsletter ads.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Audience Research

Before you design your ad, you need to think about who’s going to look at it.

Remember, you’re tapping into someone else’s audience, so get to know them. 

Here’s how:

• Gather data on age, gender, location, and income. 

• Dig deeper by exploring interests, values, and lifestyles. 

• Study online behaviors, like shopping habits, to fine-tune your targeting.

Group your audience as per common characteristics to personalize your ads to match better.

• Build thorough profiles for each segment of your audience

• Engage with your subscribers through feedback and surveys.

• Observe what your competitors are doing.

• Compare different ad elements from subject lines to imagery.

• Customize content based on behavior to make each communication feel one-on-one.

• Define the subscriber's relationship with your brand and tailor the messaging.

Go beyond the name and title of your audience and understand what they care about so your ad directly talks to them. 

2. Choose Your Newsletter Platform

Selecting the right platform for your newsletter ads comes down to your understanding of the audience.

Why?

Because the platform shapes how you make your ads. Plus, it impacts how your customers view and interact with your ads.

Here are some key considerations:

• Email Service Providers: beehiiv, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and ConvertKit.

• Industry-Specific Newsletters: You want to make sure your placement is in a newsletter in your niche.

• Publishing Platforms: Medium, beehiiv, Substack, and other content platforms with newsletter features.

• Social Media Integrated Newsletters: These include LinkedIn newsletters or X articles.

• Syndicated Newsletters: These extend your reach across multiple newsletters to new but relevant audiences.

Pro tip: Evaluate each platform based on:

• How well it integrates with your existing marketing stack

• The part of your audience that’s there

• The content formats it supports

Also, consider the analytics for the long-term optimization strategy of your newsletter ads over time.

3. Pick Your Ad Format

As for the ad formats, you can choose between any of these 6 popular ones:

Banner Ads: Visible at the top or bottom and you can animate it or have a static image. Banner ads are a great choice for product promotions. 

Text Ads: Blends seamlessly with the newsletter's content and has high click-through rates due to its native feel.

Classified Ads: Short and sweet, perfect for straightforward offers or job listings.

Sponsored Content: Articles or lists that provide value while subtly promoting a product or service, like a “top 10 listicle.”

Native Ads: Similar to sponsored content, these are designed to blend more closely with the newsletter's look.

Each format has its own unique benefits and challenges, and the best choice depends on your audience, message, and the kind of action you want the reader to take.

4. Position Your Product

Positioning your product or service is about separating yourself from the crowd and create a unique value proposition. 

Here's how to position your unique selling point (USP) in every newsletter ad:

• Value-Added Content:  Refine your ads with content that adds value instead of just selling. For example, a homeware brand could share design tips, feature customer home makeovers, or spotlight new uses for its products.

• Engagement: Go beyond promotion to invite interaction. Ask for customer opinions, encourage photo submissions or start conversations around topics related to your products for a more natural relationship.

• Trust and Authenticity: Reinforce why your brand is reliable and credible using customer testimonials and endorsements from influencers. 

5. Establish Messaging

Your messaging should resonate with your customers as they move through their buying cycle. At each stage, adjust your messaging to make it most relevant for where they’re at in the journey.

Here’s how:

Awareness Stage: Acknowledge the customer's pain points, and introduce your brand as a solution in the messaging. For example: "Struggling with project management? Our tool will streamline your workflow effortlessly."

Consideration Stage: Your audience is comparing options, so highlight what makes you better. Example: "Our eco-friendly packaging is not only good for the earth—it's designed to keep your goods safer than ever."

Decision Stage: Drive home the benefits and value of choosing your brand. Say something like: "Join the thousands of satisfied customers who've completely elevated their living spaces with our home solutions."

Notice how each stage has an underlying nuance addressed throughout the message?

If you take the time to find where your customers are in their journey, you can create ads that speak better and more directly to their needs. This will limit objections and move them closer to a conversion.

Now that you’ve completed the planning phase, it’s time to combine these elements to create high-performing newsletter ads that boost your revenue.

Anatomy of an Effective Newsletter Ad

If you want to create an ad that drives action, you need to consider a few components that’ll help you retain their attention.

Let’s first cover each component, from the copy to the creative assets that go into making a successful newsletter ad:

Primary Copy 

Your primary copy needs to be both clear and compelling. It's where you put your value proposition forward in a way that speaks directly to the reader's needs and challenges. 

Your copy should:

• Highlight the problem your product or service solves.

• Emphasize the benefits, not just the features, of your offer.

• Be concise but convincing enough to engage the reader's interest in learning more.

Taplio’s newsletter ad was placed within the Rundown AI newsletter. The ad shows:

• Problem: growing on LinkedIn takes too much time

• Solution: Taplio’s AI tool writes and schedules posts for you to save you time

• Concise: The copy is short and in bullet form making it easy to understand

Creative Assets

Creative assets are the visual elements that draw the reader's eye and make the ad memorable. They consist of:

• Images: Choose images reflecting the essence of your message to your target audience. Keep the images high-quality and relevant, and ensure the emotion or interest you evoke in the viewer aligns with your ad's goal.

• Thumb-stoppingness: Everyone’s part of an endless scroll of doom, so your ad needs to make viewers pause. Leverage visually striking elements, unexpected contrasts, or interactive features to increase engagement. The design should stand out without feeling out of place within the newsletter's context.

• Text on Image/Video: Any text overlaying your visuals should enhance the message, not detract from it. So, keep it minimal and readable with visuals and headlines that complement it effectively. This text is usually a secondary hook, which can be a clear CTA or highlight a key benefit.

Headline/Statement of the Offer

The headline is the hook of your ad. And, the most important part.

Why?

According to copywriting legend, David Ogilvy, about five times as many people read the headline as the body copy.

That means you need to put most of your effort into the headline, otherwise, no one will read the ad.

Your ad headline should:

• Grab attention with clear and powerful language.

• Summarize the offer or value proposition to entice the reader to want to read more.

• Do the A/B testing for the most effective variation so you only use the most engaging option.

Call to Action (CTA)

The CTA is what transforms interest into action. 

Without one, your audience won’t know what to do. And, if they don’t know what to do next, you won’t generate any ad revenue.

Your CTA should be:

• Visually distinct through contrasting colors or placement to stand out within the ad.

• Verbally clear, with action-oriented language that specifies exactly what the reader will get by clicking (e.g., "Download Now," "Get Your Free Trial," "Join Today").

• Strategically placed in the creative asset and/or alongside the ad in a button to lead the reader's journey from interest to decision.

• Avoid adding multiple CTA’s, it can confuse the reader.

How Atria Fast-Tracks Your Ad Creation Process

The reality is that ads aren’t easy to make. They take time, effort, and technical means to ensure they’re effective.

If you’re looking to leverage a tool that can simplify and streamline creating newsletter ads, Atria is one of the best options available. 

This AI-driven platform has a library of well-performing inspiration and competitive intelligence, making it a must-have for advertisers who want to create conversion-driven ads.

The best copywriters in the world have a “swipe file” of top-performing ads to lean on for creative ideas. But, these swipe files are often limited and rarely updated.

Atria helps you with:

• Rapid idea generation

• Scripting

• Concepts

These can help you significantly reduce the time and effort traditionally required for creative strategy and media buying.

Here’s how Atria does this for you:

1. Creates High-Performing Image Ads With 500+ Canva Templates 

The ability to quickly create eye-catching and effective image ads is extremely important in the current market. This is where Atria steps in to help:

• Create winning ads quickly. With ready-made Canva templates based on popular ad angles like Testimonials, Features / Benefits, and Promotion / Discount

• Learn from the playbook of industry leaders based on their curated picks of the highest performing of Facebook ads

How?

Atria has a designated section called “top picks,” a group of recent winning ads.

The categories range from Promotional to Announcements to Feature/Benefits and many more.

Once you click a subcategory, you’re taken to a bank of winning ads all in one place.

From there, you can select the ad template you want to use and edit it with your brand’s information.

2. Enhances Primary Copy with AI 

Crafting high-converting ad copy is no easy task.

Atria helps simplify this process with its advanced AI, helping you effortlessly create engaging and effective ad copy. Here's how:

• Find a winning ad that you like and ask AI to generate similar ad copy based on your brand’s guidelines 

• Get Atria's AI suggestions to help refine your ad's primary copy so it can be primed for engagement by aligning with previous proven success patterns.

One of the best parts about Atria is:

If you don’t have the time to punch in every detail of your ad copy, you have the option to “Make Ad Copy” once you pick a template.

Add the product URL with your primary copy, and within seconds, Atria will use AI to generate the copy.

You can make any edits (if need be, there rarely are any) because all the copy is created using data on popular trends and best-performing copy in the specific industry.

You’ll see a few suggestions, each with a small box in the corner sharing the conversion score, and you can apply whichever one you like to the selected template.

Just like that, you have a complete creative.

3. Optimize Creative Assets Through a Large Ad Library

Atria has an extensive ad library with millions of ads from platforms like Meta and TikTok. This resource is invaluable for:

• Selecting images with a history of high engagement. Atria even allows users to search, study and analyze creative assets that have captured the target audience's attention.

• Understanding the elements of "thumb-stoppingness" in a real-world context. Since Atria's database has endless examples of creative executions that performed well, they stopped scrolling, which makes it the perfect inspiration and benchmark for what works.

4. Gain Competitive Intelligence on the Best-Performing Brands:

Understanding the competitive landscape is important for any brand looking to stand out.

However, traditional competitor research can be tedious and time-intensive. 

Atria changes the game by offering a powerful feature that makes competitive intelligence both comprehensive and convenient:

• The level of detail is invaluable for “funnel hacking,” a technique for reverse-engineering successful marketing funnels.

• Share how many and which landing pages competitors are prioritizing for a clear picture of the competitors’ marketing focus.

• Analyze the most viewed or engaged landing pages to provide details of the audience segments competitors are targeting most aggressively.

Plus, Atria also gives you:

• Detailed display saves marketers from the legwork of visiting each ad individually, providing all the needed data to understand competitors' funnel strategies.

• A feature that analyzes ad scripts, breaking them down into components like introductions, features, benefits, and testimonials. This can be a blueprint for creating your own video scripts.

• A full ad script with directions for on-screen visuals, voice-overs, and text overlays by inserting just a few inputs.

How Atria Transforms the Ad Creation Process

Atria's integration into the ad creation world is a shift from traditional advertising to intuitive-based advertising that uses data at every turn. By utilizing Atria:

1. Advertisers can make informed decisions at every stage of ad development, from the primary copy to the final CTA.

2. The guesswork in creative strategy is minimized and replaced by actionable information with a proven success track record.

3. The platform's AI accelerates the creative process with quicker turnaround times without sacrificing ad quality or relevance.

How to Find Premium Newsletters With the beehiiv Ad Network

Now that you know how to fast-track the ad creation process, it’s time to find newsletters to place your ads in. 

The only problem?

Finding high-quality newsletters isn’t easy:

• It takes a ton of time just to find, let alone partner with them.

• Once you find one, it’s hard to figure out ad creative, pricing, and implementation.

• Then, you have to deal with tracking the ads.

The solution?

The beehiiv Ad Network.

It’s an advertising channel that empowers brands like yours to sponsor hundreds of premium newsletters at the click of a button.

Built by the same team that built Morning Brew's internal ad tools, the beehiiv Ad Network is the simplest way to grow your brand by leveraging the power of thousands of highly engaged audiences.

Leveraged by top brands like Brooklinen, Apollo.io, Naked, and more, the beehiiv Ad Network is a seamless way you can generate more revenue, drive conversions, and accelerate your business growth.

By using beehiiv’s Ad Network, you get access to:

• Nearly 60 million unique readers

• Over 1 billion monthly impressions

• 15,000+ top newsletters in the world

• Average open rate of 39%

• Average click-through rate of 4.3%

• The average ad click-through rate of 1%+

Plus, you don’t get left in the dark when it comes to ad performance.

You get access to transparent first-party data and reporting to ensure that you know you’re getting your money’s worth when placing an ad in a newsletter built on beehiiv.

Start growing your business with the beehiiv Ad Network today.