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Newsletters have undergone major changes in the last few years evolving from being a channel of communication and updates for companies to hobbyists and interest groups based newsletters turning it into an individual channel for information propagation and ultimately, marketing as well. While a company’s newsletter strategy might be considered to be a plan outlining how businesses can engage with their audience by email. Newsletters provide relevant updates, promotions, and other content to drive conversions and enhance brand loyalty. The plan outlines how it will do this, plus how to promote the newsletter itself to maximise its reach. However with changing times, newsletters have also evolved to become a major platform for advertising or promotion of products and services.
What exactly is email newsletter advertising?
Email Newsletter advertising is a method of promoting your product or service by utilising the audience based on an email newsletter. Businesses and individual hobbyists who have a decent newsletter audience base can leverage the reach to those audiences for brands and businesses. Newsletters can sell space in their newsletters just like ad space selling on newspapers, but landing in the user’s electronic mailbox in this case. Businesses that send out email newsletters can sell space in their newsletters to generate extra income or a reciprocal agreement in which ads are swapped between businesses (each placing an ad for the other business in their email newsletter for free).
Which newsletter to choose for advertising?
In recent times, with the shift of social media to communities, newsletters have grown on the same principle as an extension of building a community. From nerds to tech enthusiasts, creators and businesses are now considering newsletters as a serious mode of digital communication to build a community. From AI tool recommendations to marketing insights to copywriting tips and tricks, newsletters have successfully invaded almost all industries and interest areas. So follow a similar process when searching for communities to market your product on. Consider the newsletter whose audience your product could be the most effective for or the best audience for you to show your product to. Choose a copywriting newsletter if you want to reach content writers, copywriters and copy supervisors, similarly targeting a financial tips newsletter audience would be a good start for companies trying to get recognition in the fintech space.
How to build a newsletter for advertising?
Individuals have recently found huge success on different platforms building their newsletter, growing with a decent audience and subscribers organically. This is true for the newsletters, content of which is meaningful and useful for people enough for them to keep receiving the newsletter on a regular basis. In order to build a newsletter, we’d advise you to focus on a topic which interests you and might be of interest to others. Try collating different news bits around the topic or write meaningful editorial content around the topic to start off. With 1,000-2,000 organic followers, your newsletter will have a stable foundation of viewers, with potential to grow your audience. As your subscriber count grows, so will opportunities to promote other products or newsletters.
Can I use my audience list to send newsletters?
Platforms like Beehiiv allow users to add custom details of audiences for sending out newsletters, however spamming is discouraged. Back in October 2024, based on a post in their subreddit, Beehiiv came down upon a newsletter which had used unethical means of extracting email addresses of their target audience from Apollo and using Beehiiv platform to not just spam those users but also to trick Beehiiv into including their newsletter in the advertisers program allowing them to get up to $5000 from clicks on the ads featured in their newsletter. The so-called newsletter was actually spamming 10,000+ subscribers but using a network of dedicated personal and professional emails to ensure each ad placement churned 100+ clicks thereby allowing the newsletter to turn Beehiiv into one of their revenue channels. When Beehiiv executives discovered this, they immediately sprung to action banning them from the platform, a ban so intense that, in February 2025 when the same perpetrators tried the same tactic from a different account, Beehiiv immediately banned them without wasting any time.
While adding a custom audience is recommended if you have an individual list, do not follow unethical means of abusing the platform or the channel.
How much does Email Newsletter Advertising cost?
Newsletter advertising is typically priced on a cost per mille (CPM), or the cost per 1,000 subscribers on the list. Advertisers might pay up to $30 CPM, anything over that is probably not worth it. For a list of 10,000 subscribers, the total cost to advertise would be $300.
Some advertisers might want to consider the expected cost-per-click (CPC) in addition to CPM when looking for email newsletters to place their ads. To figure out the expected CPC, you'll need to know not only the number of subscribers on the list but also the click rate. Once you have that information, multiply the number of subscribers by the click rate to get the estimated number of clicks. Then, divide that number by the CPM.
Let's look at a quick example:
Number of Subscribers: 30,000
CPM: $20
Click Rate: 2.62% (average across industries)
CPC: ((30,000/1,000) * $20) / (30,000 * 0.0262) = $0.76
You might also find pricing based on cost per lead (CPL). If that's the case, advertisers will only pay when they get a lead from their ad. Often, pricing by lead costs more than CPM since it's not an estimated situation-those offering ad placement in their email newsletters know exactly how many leads an ad has generated.
What are the benefits of newsletter advertising?
Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels with an average ROI of 4200%. This means that for every $1 spent on email marketing, it generates a potential return of $42. One of the main reasons that email marketing has such a great return is that it's personal and direct, landing you squarely in the recipient's email inbox. In addition to the benefits of email marketing as a whole, newsletter advertising also has several benefits to consider:
- Cost. For ad buyers, the cost of newsletter advertising is typically going to be cheaper than designing, printing, and mailing ads. It can also be cheaper than placing Google ads or ads on social media. For sellers, if you're already sending an email newsletter, why not offer up unused space in your email template to earn some extra cash and minimise the cost of your email marketing service?
- Reputation Management. Newsletter advertising can be helpful to ad buyers in terms of not only increasing brand awareness but improving reputation. When you advertise in an email newsletter, you're sending a signal to the subscribers of that newsletter that your brand is trusted enough by the sender to be included. This goes a long way toward making your brand seem more reputable.
- Targeting. Email marketing lists tend to be fairly niche so it's a safe bet that they're reaching an already targeted market. When you place ads with businesses that have an audience that overlaps with yours, you can leverage their targeting with your own ads- without having to do the segmentation and audience creation yourself.
- Added Value. If you're selling ad space in your email newsletters, take the time to decide which advertisers will most benefit your email list. Whenever possible, choose to place ads that your audience will be interested in.
