Common Newsletter Ad Pricing Models

Email Metrics for Sponsored Advertising broken down

Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash

Hey Guys,

As I venture into Ad pricing Models for my 16+ Newsletters, it’s taking me a bit of a time to research the field. While I’ve worked in marketing and Email marketing, I haven‘t touched much on the PR or advertising side of things.

To be honest there aren’t really great metrics around what makes an Email effective for a Sponsor unless they going for “Brand impressions”, like more discoverability for their product launch or new enterprise service. In the case of Substack itself, the analytics are decidedly poor and sparse. This is a major problem when you are trying to crunch the numbers. I have the same problem with LinkedIn Newsletters.

At best CPM, CPC, CPA are poor approximations in my opinion. Deciding on what your CPM is will depend on the quality, area and type of your audience.

In reality I think some balance of CPM and CPO, or cost per open (engagement), seems to make the most sense if you are thinking about a realistic flat fee for an Ad placement in your Newsletter.