Re: Questions about list sponsorships

From: Cliff Kurtzman <cliff_at_tenagra.com>
Date: Fri 21 Apr 2000 12:29:36 -0500

SCOTT JOHNSON WROTE:
> One of my self appointed duties in my new position is
> to incorporate advertising into our clients interactive
> media. One of the biggest concerns I have is how does
> my company go about selling advertising space on a
> variety of email newsletters? How/ do most companies
> charge? Is it by the amount of subscribers you have on
> the list, the length of the advertisement, or another
> measurement? What are average rates for an email
> newsletter? Do you place the advertisement at the top,
> the bottom, in the middle or all of the above and is
> there a different fee for those different placements?
> Should you only allow one advertiser per newsletter or
> multiple?

Rates do vary based on all these factors, and they are
really all over the place. It comes down to what the
market will accept in your industry and your ability to
sell the ad. It also comes down to what type of
advertisement is appropriate for the content you are
distributing, and whether it is easier to sell an
exclusive higher priced ad versus a non-exclusive lower
priced ad. I'll give you some examples based on what
we charge for some of our lists.

We run a tennis list with 36,000 subscribers, and we
charge 4 cents per subscriber for a 35 line ad inserted
in our newsletter, or 10 cents per subscriber for a
sponsored dedicated mailing that can be up to 20K in
length. This would seem to be a real deal, but we have
few takers for either option as there is little
activity yet in online advertising by the tennis
industry.

On our "Beyond Year 2000" list, which targets 75,000
people interested in eCommerce and the Internet, we are
charging about 7 cents per subscriber for a 15 line ad
insert, or 25 cents per subscriber for a sponsored
mailing of up to 20K. Because this list targets the IT
industry, it can command a higher permium than one that
target tennis.

At the other extreme, for this (Online Ads) list, we
charge 12 cents per subscriber for a 3 line
non-exclusive ad that runs for 5 days at the top and
bottom of each digest. And, in spite of the higher
price and smaller ad than our other lists offer, the
advertising for this list is sold out until next
January, except for a few ad slots in our conference
coverage mailouts. The reason we can charge (and do
receive) more for sponsoring this list is that it
highly targets an industry that is online and that is
advertising online.

As an upper limit to what you might charge, consider
that doing a print mailing to the same audience would
likely cost well over $1.00 per subscriber for the
materials, postage, and addresses. I think that
services that sell mailings on opt-in lists (such as
postmaster direct) generally charge between 10 cents
and 30 cents per subscriber, so I doubt you are going
to be able to charge more than that for an insert ad in
your newsletter. Finally, consider that your time has
value and that your time required to negotiate an ad
sale, sign a contract, accept the creative, and run it
is likely worth well more than $100. So you might
consider making a policy of only accepting ad buys of
more than this amount even if the list is small. One
way to do this with small lists is to offer a buy that
includes multiple repetitions of the ad run.

--Cliff Kurtzman
president and CEO
The Tenagra Corporation
http://www.tenagra.com/
281/480-6300




Received on Fri Apr 21 2000 - 12:29:36 CDT