5 Tips to run Newsletter Marketing campaigns

Introduction

Newsletter marketing is a great way to achieve high returns and additional brand benefits from being associated with quality media brands and creators. Many marketers use this channel to drive above-market returns (and lower CPMs). However, newsletter performance can take a lot of time, and results can vary. That's why we've collected 5 tips and best practices to help you master your newsletter marketing campaigns and publish the best newsletter ads in the game!

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1. Set your targets and goals

Before starting your newsletter advertising campaign, you need to define your target and goals. You can split this in the performance outcomes you're looking to get and the audience you're going after.

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Performance Target

When setting targets for your newsletter advertising campaign, start by defining your overall budget based on your marketing objectives and available resources. Next, decide on the primary metric you want to optimize for, whether it's overall awareness, reach, clicks, or signups to your product. Align this metric with your campaign goals and target audience behavior. By setting clear targets for your budget, number of newsletters, and optimization metric, you can effectively measure the success of your newsletter advertising campaign and make data-driven decisions to maximize your marketing ROI.

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What is a good click-through rate?

Benchmark click-through rates (CTR) for newsletter advertisements can vary depending on factors such as industry, audience demographics, and the quality of the advertisement. However, as a general guideline, a good CTR for newsletter ads typically falls within the range of 2% to 5%. However, if your goal is reach then you should be fine with a lower rate in the 1% neighborhood. Keep in mind that this range can fluctuate based on various factors, and it's essential to compare your performance against industry standards and your own historical data for more accurate insights. Additionally, continuously optimizing your ad content, targeting strategies, and design elements can help improve CTR over time.

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What is a good CPM?

If you're just optimizing for impressions you need to target a CPM. A good CPM (Cost Per Mille or Cost Per Thousand Impressions) to target when sponsoring newsletters can vary based on factors such as industry, audience demographics, and the specific goals of your advertising campaign. However, as a general guideline, a CPM of around $5 to $25 is often considered reasonable for newsletter sponsorships. This range can fluctuate based on factors such as the size and engagement level of the newsletter's subscriber base, the exclusivity of the sponsorship, and the level of targeting and customization offered by the newsletter publisher. It's essential to consider your budget, expected return on investment, and the potential reach and engagement of the newsletter when evaluating the appropriateness of a CPM rate for your sponsorship.

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Quick tip: You should be fine paying a higher CPM closer to $20 for high brand value newsletters or more concentrated audiences.

If you beat your targets, great! If you missed them, follow up with the creator to see what they think could have been the source. Measuring your results is important if you're on a tight budget.

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Target audience

After setting your primary metric, it's crucial to nail down the right audience by defining specific geographies, ages, and types of user personas you're targeting. Start by identifying the geographical locations where your target audience is most concentrated or where you aim to expand your market presence. Consider factors like language preferences, cultural nuances, and regional trends that may influence audience engagement. Next, define the age groups within your target demographic, ensuring your messaging resonates with their interests and preferences. Additionally, create detailed user personas based on demographic data, behavior patterns, and psychographic characteristics to better understand your audience's needs and motivations. By honing in on the right audience segments, you can tailor your newsletter advertising campaign to effectively reach and engage with potential customers, maximizing the impact of your marketing efforts.

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2. Use the right newsletter marketing tool

There are a lot of tools out there to help you with newsletter marketing including newsletter marketplaces, platforms, and databases. That said, some can be costly or time-draining. The key things you need to look for are tools that help you with Discovery (to search for and find newsletters), Evaluation (to evaluate and compare their stats), and Collaboration (to streamline ad creation and payment). Newsletter advertising is a high-return channel, but that's also because there is a little work required on the way. Picking the tool can help you secure high conversion rates on your newsletter ads without spending more time than you need.

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Discovery

The important things to look out for here are the overall supply of creators a newsletter marketplace or marketing tool has. The best sources are multi-platform and get you access to newsletters on all major email service providers including Convertkit, Mailchimp, Beehiiv, Substack, Ghost, and more. Therefore we recommend that you avoid platform-specific tools as they will only show you newsletters that they host. Moreover, your discovery tool should be well designed and enable you to quickly filter and search for the demographics and targets you set in the earlier tip.

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Evaluation

There are a lot of newsletters out there, you need to be able to compare quickly to find the ones you like without making errors. Tools like Passionfroot help you side by side compare things like subscriber count, open rate, click through rate, prices, audience geography, age, and more. In this step you should likely narrow your shortlist by 50%.

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Collaboration

Some tools only help you discover newsletters - leaving you to manually manage the collaboration by yourself. If you do this across multiple newsletters you will spend way too much time and ultimately lose out on solid results. Therefore pick a tool that streamlines ad creation and payment so you and the newsletter are kept on track. Here Passionfroot has a great collaboration flow with automated creative asset forms and payment links via card and bank transfer. This helps you standardize and speed up collaborations so you can do newsletter marketing campaigns at scale.

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Our recommended newsletter marketing tool

For Discovery, Evaluation, and Collaboration - Passionfroot is a great tool to help you save time and get results fast. Passionfroot is a newsletter marketing tool that has a newsletter marketplace allowing you to search for millions in newsletter audiences by topic, geography, age, and more. Their storefronts let you seamlessly compare newsletters open rate, click-through-rate, CPM, CPC, and more. Simply book the ones you like and let the collaboration flow also automate creative assets and payment so you can focus on scaling your campaign, not maintaining it. If you want free access, sign up here.

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3. Create an effective newsletter ad

Now that you've done all the work to find the right newsletters - let's make sure to not fall flat on the ad creation. Creating the best newsletter ad involves careful consideration of several factors to maximize its effectiveness. Firstly, ensure your ad resonates with your audience by aligning the messaging, tone, and visuals with their interests, preferences, and pain points. Keep the ad concise and focused, as newsletter readers typically have limited attention spans. Choose an image that is eye-catching, relevant, and appropriately sized for optimal display within the newsletter. The content of the image should complement the ad's message and evoke an emotional response from viewers. Lastly, nail your call to action by making it clear, compelling, and action-oriented, prompting readers to take the desired next step, whether it's clicking a link, making a purchase, or signing up for a service. By carefully crafting each element of your newsletter ad with the audience in mind and ensuring a strong call to action, you can create a compelling advertisement that drives engagement and achieves your campaign goals.

One last tip on this is to also leverage the newsletter writer's input on the ad. They know their audience best and how to tailor both your newsletter ad content and visual for the best results!

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Bonus tip: Mobile optimization for your newsletter ads

When optimizing your ad, keep in mind that the majority of newsletters are read on mobile devices. Therefore, it's crucial to design with mobile responsiveness in mind. Ensure that your ad is visually appealing and easy to read on smaller screens by using a clean layout, legible fonts, and appropriately sized images. Keep the ad concise and focused, as mobile users tend to have shorter attention spans. Additionally, make sure your call to action is prominent and easy to tap on touchscreen devices, ensuring a seamless user experience. Test your ad across various mobile devices and screen sizes to ensure compatibility and readability. By prioritizing mobile-friendly design elements, you can effectively engage with mobile newsletter readers and maximize the impact of your advertising campaign.

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4. Monitor and measure results

When you launch a campaign, make sure to keep your initial targets that you set in mind. Set up a small table to track all of your collaborations on the parameters you checked. For example, if you had a targeted click through rate - track the amount of subscribers, total unique clicks your ad got, and then from those calculate the CTR. To do this you need to share a UTM link with the creator ahead of time. Within 2 days of the send you should have a good sense of the outcome of the advertisement.

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Test and optimize

When running campaigns, there are so many variables that can vastly swing your results and conversion rate. Therefore, you need to do some testing. When evaluating ad performance, it's essential to focus on key metrics like click-through rates and signup rates. Start by comparing the click-through rate for each version of the advertisement. Click-through rate measures the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link or button within the email. The version with a higher Click-through rate indicates stronger engagement and interest from subscribers. The reason we use the CTR versus total clicks is to see the return/rate you get on a per subscriber basis.

Additionally, you should also assess signup rates if your goal is to drive conversions to your product. You can use this by adding a UTM parameter to your signup link that allows you to track users all the way through to signup.

By closely analyzing both click-through rates and signup rates, you can identify which version of the advertisement resonates better with your audience and drives the desired outcomes. This will help you identify what works quickly, so that you can double down on that channel.

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5. Double down on what works

Once you have found newsletters and tested some campaigns - you should focus on what worked. That can be either taking your best ad creative and trying it on other newsletters, or engaging in deeper partnerships with the newsletters that do well for you. At the end of the day newsletters are run by people, and if you build a relationship with them they will want to help you succeed!

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Concluding thoughts and tips

Newsletter marketing is an incredibly valuable acquisition channel for marketers if done right. To avoid falling into the traps that some fall into, take all these tips to succeed:

• Set your target and goals
• Pick the right newsletter marketing tool
• Create an effective newsletter ad
• Track and measure your results
• Double down on what works

These steps are quite targeted and simple, but if you want to make it even easier for yourself, simply sign up to Passionfroot for Partners. Our tool helps you discover, evaluate, book, and collaborate with the best newsletters in the world like Superhuman, 1440, and more.