How to leverage paid marketing to drive newsletter signups
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button: Hey folks! Today I’m answering questions from readers. If you have a question you want me to answer in a future newsletter, leave it in this thread. The best way to leverage paid marketing to drive newsletter signupsThe first questions comes from Neal Bascomb:
Paid marketing has become a pretty common practice in the newsletter space, especially for outlets looking to scale up very quickly. Morning Brew was an early pioneer with this strategy, and I’ve since seen many other newsletter publishers copy its approach. I would say there are three main ways to deploy paid marketing spend (not including blackhat tactics like buying lists). I’ll start with the most effective and work my way down: Paid placement in other newsletters The best way to acquire a new newsletter subscriber is to be recommended by another newsletter. Not only are they self-selected as newsletter readers, but they already have their inbox open, which means they’re more likely to see and click on a confirmation email after they’ve signed up. Lots of newsletters sell sponsorships now, but there are also marketplaces like Paved and Sparkloop that have paid referral programs you can sign up for. The way it works is that you set the maximum amount you’d be willing to pay per subscriber – say, $3 – and then individual newsletter creators can go in and grab customized links that track those conversions. This arrangement can be ideal because you only have to pay for the ads when they actually work. Paid social promotion As you mentioned in your question, more and more newsletters are buying native ads on social media. There are two approaches to this. The first is to create some kind of call to action that attempts to entice the person into directly signing up for the newsletter, usually by explaining its value proposition. I definitely wouldn’t go this route unless you’re retargeting the ad toward people who already consumed your content but neglected to sign up. The second kind of ad actually promotes a specific piece of premium content. These are not only better at driving clicks, but can also lead to organic sharing that you don’t have to pay for. Snigdha Sur, founder of the paid newsletter The Juggernaut, spoke to me previously about how she leverages internal analytics to choose which articles to promote with paid spend:
Influencer marketing This isn’t as common, but I have seen newsletter publishers work directly with influencers on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to recommend their newsletters. When done well, this can be pretty effective. On a recent Office Hours Zoom call with my subscribers, the political blogger Taegan Goddard mentioned that one of his biggest jumps in paid subscriptions came when a random TikTok star devoted an entire video to talking about his blog, Political Wire. He didn’t pay for the placement, but it certainly opened his eyes to TikTok’s ability to drive real engagement. The Daily Upside, a finance-focused newsletter, also experimented with influencer marketing. Here’s how founder Patrick Trousdale described it to me:
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend diving into influencer marketing unless you have a substantial ad budget and the resources to monitor the results. Mileage can vary widely depending on the influencer’s dedication to the sponsorship and the engagement level of their audience, so it’s an easy way to waste a lot of money if you’re not constantly optimizing for which influencers actually drive signups. What do you think?
Do you want to reach my audience of creators, media operators, marketers, and tech workers?On January 1, I plan to increase my sponsorship prices significantly, which means that if you’ve ever thought about buying an ad on my newsletter, now is the time to do so. Go here to learn everything including list size, open rate, audience demographics, pricing, and ad availability. Quick hitsAre esports a growing market with a huge amount of future potential? Yes. Did investors get too far out ahead of their skis with assuming that esports would quickly overtake traditional pro sports in market value? Definitely yes. [Bloomberg] It turns out media companies don’t make for very good tech companies. [The Rebooting] Will a recession bring direct-to-consumer brands back to podcasts? [Bloomberg] How BookTok is fueling a resurgence in fiction reading. [Vulture] How to price your paid newsletterThe next question comes from Krystal Knapp:
A lot of writers struggle with the question of subscription pricing, mostly because the per-unit cost of sending a newsletter is basically zero. At least with physical products you can start with the price of production and then calculate from there. But how do you determine the financial value of an item that costs you nothing but your time?... Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to Simon Owens's Media Newsletter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
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