Email Newsletter Sponsorship: Who is getting it right? 3rd May, 2011

If you have an engaging email newsletter, it may provide a perfect platform to build a new revenue stream for your business.  However, it is important to understand all the options in order to fully optimise these opportunities for your potential sponsors.

 In my last post ‘Email Newsletter Sponsorship: How to do it and why’ I identified three key questions to determining whether an email newsletter could provide a sponsorship platform:

Does the email newsletter have a niche audience?

  1. Are there analytics to measure results of sponsor campaigns?
  2. Is there sufficient resource to manage?

 With all criteria satisfied, we can begin to look at how to build your sponsorship assets.  As emails are flexible rights, email newsletters offer a unique opportunity to highly tailor your sponsorship offering providing unlimited ways of branding and association.  Two of the most common types of sponsorship inclusions within email newsletters are banner advertising and integrated placement.

 Figaro Digital – the basics of banner advertising

Figaro Digital is a magazine targeting digital marketers.  Their weekly email newsletter is mailed to a database of over 16,000 marketing professionals – a prime target audience for suppliers. 

Their most recent email newsletter sponsor, ContentVox, was featured last week (full email here).  

ContentVox’s sponsorship provided placement at a prime position (top left) as well as a banner advertisement on the bottom promoting a reader offer.  By providing space both above and below the fold, Figaro Digital has ensured their sponsors will be seen regardless of click thru rates. However, the format and visual representation of the sponsorship and reader offer is not in line with Figaro Digital’s overall email newsletter branding, making it a very obvious advertisement.  Furthermore, the capitalisation of FREE within the content position devalues the other messages within the rest of the communication.
On the positive side, the reader offer is in line with the context of the newsletter, providing readers free content in order to improve paid and natural search – their next event.

Internet World: Facebook enhancement  

 Facebook has recently sponsored marketing conference Internet World’s email newsletter (full email here) that was sent to over 85,000 registered users. 

As the sponsor, Facebook took the prime location of the newsletter (top right), promotion within the main copy linking through to their speaking synopsis at the event, and are branded throughout.  

 This type of sponsorship illustrates a more integrated approach to email newsletter sponsorship and provides benefit to both parties.  The promotion of Facebook’s involvement at the conference is a drive for new registrants, while Facebook gains further exposure, enhancing their purchased exhibitor rights.

 The only downfall with this sponsorship is that it does not highlight the Facebook page that Internet World has created to promote their event, ironically promoting their Twitter account instead.

If you are looking to fully integrate sponsorship offerings within your email communications, you should include all available potential opportunities.  In this case, the advocacy that Internet World could build through their own promotion of their Facebook page would build a stronger association between the two organisations, which is what they set out to do at the outset.