Want to reach a new audience? Sponsoring a successful email newsletter can help you deliver your message to your target market as Jackie Fast of Slingshot Sponsorship reveals.
Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels available, allowing you to reach a wide audience and offering proven results. E-newsletters are particularly useful as a tool for communicating with customers, building engagement, driving traffic, and directing customers to key content.
And, with a groundswell of readers behind it, an email newsletter can be used as a platform for sponsorship - providing a great revenue opportunity for any business with an e-newsletter and a great marketing opportunity for businesses looking to reach a new audience,
Sponsorship of e-newsletters can be a powerful way to tap into new customer segments by aligning your brand to relevant topics or propositions. It helps increase exposure in a receptive environment (your customers' inbox) and can subtly promote your brand whilst gaining goodwill through association.
There are a variety of e-newsletter sponsorship investment levels to consider, which vary according to type of audience (mass market B2C vs niche market B2B), frequency (daily vs monthly), and style of content (promotions vs editorial). From a cost perspective, most range between £1,000 and £3,500 per campaign (which may translate to a one off, mass market hit, or a monthly “takeover” of display ads).
However, not all e-newsletters are appropriate for the task. There are a few points that you need to take into consideration when considering this type of sponsorship.
Audience
An e-newsletter can only be sponsored if it attracts an audience that is either sufficiently large or very niche. To state the obvious, B2C e-newsletters require a large audience to be of interest, whilst B2B e-newsletters can deliver value with smaller audiences with greater purchasing power.
The email newsletter publisher should demonstrate value in their audience through proof of size, quality and engagement of their audience.
Measurement
ROI is key to sponsorship and vital for brand sponsors when choosing who to spend their marketing budget with. Analytics tools will also provide publishers and sponsors with all the necessary metrics to understand views, click-throughs and open rates; and it is this data that will ensure that pricing and value for money are maintained at the right level.
Resource
Sponsorship is not just about attaching someone else's brand to yours. For this type of sponsorship to be successful, you need to understand data and brand synergies, and have the ability to unearth unseen co-branding opportunities.
Written by Jackie Fast of Slingshot Sponsorship.