How To Create a Newsletter Sponsor Page

If you have a healthy subscriber list and are looking into ways to generate some funds from your regular newsletters, sponsorship opportunities may have crossed your mind.

The idea behind this is to work with like-minded brands that want to pay for an advertising spot within your newsletter. This can benefit both your brand and the sponsor, as you’ll be able to start charging for advertisement space within your emails, and brands can put their products/services in front of your audience.

In this article, we’ll run you through everything you need to know about newsletter sponsorship, including how to create a newsletter sponsor page that will make companies desperate to work with your brand!

What Is a Newsletter Sponsor?

Let’s get started with the basics. What is a newsletter sponsor?

A newsletter sponsor is a company that pays for an advertorial embedded within one of your email newsletters. This type of advertising method is usually more targeted than stand-alone banner advertisements as a newsletter sponsor will be placed within the newsletter content so that it reads well for the user.

The best newsletter advertisements offer a close link between the brand running the newsletter and the sponsor. It’s important for the success of the advert, and the e-marketing campaign as a whole, that the audience is engaged and doesn't feel like they’re being pressured into making a purchase.

How Do You Ask For Sponsorship for a Newsletter?

Sponsorship opportunities within newsletters usually arise in one of two ways:

• Direct contact - A personal approach is often successful when it comes to asking for sponsorship, particularly when working with smaller companies. By reaching out directly, you can explain your keenness to work with like-minded brands that your subscribers will love–plus, you can emphasize the size of your audience and other benefits the sponsor would gain by working with you.

• Agencies - If the company you want to sponsor your newsletter is large, you may find that you’ll need to contact their management/marketing agency to work with them on a sponsorship opportunity. Find out the contact details for their marketing team and put forward a compelling case as to why they should be desperate to feature within your newsletter.

Regardless of which route you take, creating a dedicated landing page explaining why brands should be interested in sponsoring you is key when it comes to success rate.

Within your new page, you could promote some of your best KPIs, such as the following, to encourage brands to respond to your sponsorship request:

• Open-rate

• Conversion rate

• Subscriber numbers

You could even send out a dedicated newsletter promoting this page to brands that you want to work with - this would be much more effective than a quick text email.

Make sure your newsletter sponsorship page is compelling, professional, and well-designed to show you know what you’re doing when it comes to sending out newsletters. It’s important that your sponsors are confident and excited about being part of your newsletter, so give them a taste of the sort of content they could be a part of by making your landing page well-designed and punchy.

Why Listen To Me? I have been working in the digital marketing space for nearly 8 years, predominantly helping brands with their email marketing and online presence. I now specialize in creating great content surrounding email newsletters to help people nail their email strategies.

How Much Does It Cost to Sponsor a Newsletter?

The amount of money you can charge for a brand to sponsor your newsletter ultimately depends on the size of the opportunity. If you have a large following, and you’d be opening up a significant opportunity for the sponsoring company (e.g. a large audience of engaged people), then you’ll be able to charge more money for sponsorship.

If your subscriber base is smaller, you may need to charge less or approach more niche brands to obtain sponsorship.

There’s no set rule, but many companies tend to charge a percentage amount based on the number of subscribers you have. For example, let’s say you charge a 5% fee. This would mean if you have 25,000 subscribers, you would charge a sponsor $1,250 to feature within your newsletter and have their brand placed in front of your subscribers.

How Do I Find Sponsors for My Newsletter?

Finding sponsors for your newsletter often comes naturally as your brand may have obvious fits. In other cases, you may find that identifying sponsors requires a more comprehensive process involving parsing through options.

If you work with other companies already, this is a great place to start. Approach like-minded brands that you already have a relationship with and ask them if they’d be interested in paying for advertising space within your newsletter.

Make sure that they know all the details in terms of the potential reach of the campaign based on your subscriber numbers, and involve them in the creative side of the advertisement to ensure you’re both happy with the content that will be going out in the newsletter.

Alternatively, you’ll need to commence an outreach campaign designed to obtain great sponsors for your newsletter. This could involve creating a short list of the top ten companies that you’d love to sponsor your newsletter and reaching out to them via social media, email, or their management agency to pitch advertising space to them.

Make sure you go in armed with lots of stats that make your brand look great, and show them that they won’t want to miss out on advertising within your newsletter.

For a head start, check out this step-by-step guide on how to secure a sponsor for your newsletter!

How Do I Get People To Join My Newsletter?

Getting people to sign-up for your newsletter is super important when it comes to sponsorship campaigns, as brands won’t want to pay to advertise within your newsletter if you don’t have a significant audience.

Here are some quick-fire tips for getting more people to join your newsletter:

• Provide an incentive - People won’t do something for nothing, so give them an incentive for signing up for your newsletter, such as a discount code or early sale access.

• Referral schemes - Set up a referral program whereby you reward existing subscribers for encouraging their friends to sign up for your mailing list. This could be in the form of branded merchandise or money off a future order.

• Use gated content - By putting certain content behind a page that requires an email address before providing access, you’re creating exclusive content that only subscribers will be able to see. This makes your content more exclusive and will encourage more users to sign up.

Did you know that creating an engaging email footer is another great way of boosting subscriber numbers? Take a look at our blog for inspiration on how a great footer can earn you more subscribers.

How Do I Get People To Open My Newsletter?

As with growing subscriber numbers, a good open rate is a key metric when persuading brands to sponsor your newsletter.

If you have a low open rate, they’ll be unlikely to want to work with you, whereas if you can prove that your subscribers are keen to engage with your content, a brand will be more likely to get on board, as they’ll recognize that there’s a high chance of your subscribers seeing their advertisement.

Here are a few quick ways you can increase the open rate of your newsletter:

• Always use a compelling subject line - As the first part of your newsletter that a subscriber will see, the subject line is super important. Come up with a great subject line that offers a teaser as to what could be in your newsletter; here are some great subject lines that will get your emails opened.

• Use audience segmentation - You can achieve higher open rates by tailoring your subscriber list. For example, let’s say you sell a clothing range with both male and female clothing items. You could use audience segmentation to create a list divided by gender and then send users more targeted emails. Subscribers are more likely to open emails that appear tailored to them, so using audience segmentation can be very beneficial for keeping your newsletters targeted and successful.

• Personalization - Make sure to personalize your email as much as possible. It’s likely that your subscribers will receive many emails a day, so yours needs to stand out. Use their first name if you can when addressing your subscribers - this is a great way to boost open rates and make a subscriber feel valued.

Wrap-up - How beehiiv Can Help With Newsletter Sponsorship

Newsletter sponsorship is ideal for starting to monetize your newsletter–and where better to start than with the beehiiv newsletter platform?

Here at beehiiv, we’ll not only support you on your sponsorship ventures, but we’ve got a whole host of ways to help with newsletter monetization too! We can provide you with access to our dedicated ad network, which means featuring logos from some of the top companies in the world within your newsletter.

This not only gives your newsletter credibility and monetization opportunities, but we’ll also pair you up with brands that are a good match for your company and audience, helping to improve the content of your newsletter as well as providing sponsorship opportunities.

You can even use the latest beehiiv landing page designs to start creating your own newsletter sponsor page, full of great statistics and reviews to encourage brands to want to work with you.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for a free with beehiiv today and get those sponsorship requests rolling in!