Re: Questions about list sponsorships

From: Brad Jensen <brad_at_elstore.com>
Date: Mon 24 Apr 2000 19:08:18 -0500

CLIFF KURTZMAN WROTE:
> 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.

"If they don't buy, the price is too high." You would
be better off to lower the price to the point where
people start buying. Then when they get results, you
can start raising price.

You are saying that the client expectations are
incorrect. You might as well say that your own
expectations are incorrect.

> 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.

These prices seem extremely high to me. Assuming that
you are speaking of a one-time mailing of one ad to the
list.

Pricing versus comparable snail mail costs is horseless
carriage thinking. If it costs you almost nothing to
provide the service, the only two considerations are
how often you can advertise to the list without
drowning your subscribers, and how much revenue the
client is going to receive in sales.

> 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.

And one transaction can be worth many thousands of
dollars. Not to mention the business leverage of
capturing the customer at the beginning of their
internet infatuation.

> 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.

Also I see list publishing services, such as onelist
and egroup, that put a small banner at the bottom of
each message. I don't know if they are selling targeted
lists, or just ereach advertising.

I can't imagine they are charging more than a fraction
of a cent per view. If they are, I'm starting my own
free email list hosting service next week.

--
Brad Jensen brad_at_elstore.com
President
Electronic Storage Corporation Tulsa OK USA
918-664-7276
LaserVault Report Retrieval & Data Mining
www.Laservault.com




Received on Mon Apr 24 2000 - 19:08:18 CDT