Ep. 249- Are EMAIL NEWSLETTER Sponsorships Effective?✔️❌ GUEST: Co-founder of Media Intercept - Jeffrey Eisenberg [Biggest Player in Email Newsletter World!]🌎

0:08Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwetelson. Let's do this, not that.

0:40We are back for Do This, Not That, presented by Marigold. And we got a guest. We got a smart dude, somebody way smarter than me, and somebody that knows a lot about email newsletters. And we're going to dig into all that today. So who is here? We got Jeffrey Eisenberg. He is the chief revenue officer and co-founder of Media Intercept. And Media Intercept is like the leading organization if you're trying to get involved with sponsoring newsletters and sponsoring content, they're crushing it. Jeffrey's been doing this for way too long, and he's got a wealth of experience. I cannot wait to talk to him about all this.

1:15Jeffrey, welcome to the show. Appreciate it, Jay. Thanks for having me. All right. So this is going to be fun. I've known Jeff for a long time, so we're going to crush it. So before we get into email newsletters, the good, the bad, and the ugly, what is your deal? Why is email newsletters your world? How do you get involved with this chaos? It's a long story, not super interesting. Started my career in media ad sales and I've done everything from starting in radio, gotten digital relatively early, video specifically. So we're talking 2008, which is really pre-YouTube monetization and was in the video-branded content world for a long time and did that in New York and then ended up moving to Florida and started consulting and consulted for a few media companies.

2:03And one of them was really a commerce company that was looking to monetize some media that they had. And we sort of stumbled upon newsletters as a business and did that for a number of years before a business partner of mine and I decided to launch Media Intercept really because we saw sort of a gap in the newsletter business. There was a proliferation of newsletters out there. It's still sort of the Wild West in terms of how to properly gauge the value of those audiences, sponsor it, do so in the right way. So we launched the company a couple of years ago. And as Jay mentioned, we have become one of the market leaders in the space.

2:42We do B2C. We do B2B. We work with thousands of newsletters and, you know, almost 100 advertisers at this point. So we're a pretty good scaled business. And it's been interesting. There's certainly a lot to learn in this space. I think we're still really, you know, not even on first base, we're still in the batter's box in terms of this channel growing as a real go-to channel for marketers. But yeah, that's a little bit of my story. So let's dig into that for a second because people are listening, whether you're a tiny B2B, you know, business to business or consumer marketer, or you're really big, you may not be isolating out email newsletters as a marketing channel.

3:21But it is, right? It is a marketing channel. And we all get it. We sign up for newsletters and you see ads in those newsletters. So how does somebody put their toe in the water? How does somebody get involved with testing email newsletters as a paid vehicle to drive their marketing programs? How do they do it? Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because, you know, where the space is today, you know, it's still very much like what I would call a mid-funnel solution, right? So you get a lot of the benefit of, say, just branding and awareness, but there is still a large performance component to it, which does make it easier for a lot of marketers to jump in because there's not as much risk as just, hey, I'm going to buy a sponsored article for a flat fee or even sponsor a newsletter on a flat fee.

4:09We as a company work on a CPC basis, which we think of as a shared risk model, but there's CPA models out there as well. And I think it really starts with understanding what your objectives are as a marketer. What am I trying to do? Am I B2B, really focused on selling a specific SaaS product to a very particular audience, which is very narrow and in some ways easier because you know what you're going after? Or am I Procter & Gamble and I just want people to be aware of my latest deodorant or whatever? So understanding those objectives, thinking about audiences. And I think, interestingly, we're moving away from programmatic in newsletter to a much more contextual way of thinking.

4:51And then really identifying those creators that you think best align with your brand, both from an audience and an interest perspective. But, you know, I think companies like ours are really like our goal is to help marketers navigate the space because there's a lot of fragmentation out there and it is it is hard to just dive in. So it's good to find somebody, whether it's us or other companies out there that are aggregating and providing guidance in terms of best practices. So for me, the way I always thought about email newsletter sponsorships was always like an add on. Oh, I'm going to run.

5:23I'm going to take the, you know, these run of site on this website, whatever it is. and then, oh, they're going to throw in their newsletter as an add-on to the program. Is that really not the way it is anymore? Are newsletters now a vehicle that people just literally, that's the media buy and it's not just the throw on with a larger buy? So yes and no. I would say there are companies out there, like big media companies, for example, that really want to sell you what they consider to be higher value items to them from a revenue perspective. So video, branded content. And they're going to throw in newsletter because primarily for them, in many cases, their newsletters are retention tools for their audiences.

6:03So they're not really effectively monetizing it. Now that's changing as a lot of companies sort of pull back from, again, programmatic, just putting banner ads and newsletters and actually being thoughtful about the content they're creating, capturing new audiences and really viewing it as a separate media channel. And then you have other companies that are newsletter first companies. I mean, the big ones out there like the skim and morning brew uh the hustle that interestingly was acquired by hubspot and hubspot just uses that as a marketing channel and those companies like you're buying the newsletter you're buying the content that goes out there you're buying the fact that those readers have raised their hand and said hey i'm going to subscribe to this i'm going to be engaged and i want to be a part of that content as an advertiser and that's what you're buying so okay so i get it now you can just buy it as a solo that's great and i would have to imagine now when you, when you all are selling a newsletter inclusion and ad, and so it was like, okay, we want to put this in it's, it's a big, you know, image or whatever.

7:01Sometimes you're looking at it like, well, that's not going to work. We know this works. Uh, we know this doesn't work. This type of copy works. This doesn't work. So if somebody's out there like, all right, I'm going to try paid newsletter, email newsletter sponsorships. What is the content format or what is the ad that's going to do the best that people should be using? Yeah. I mean, I think for us, it's clear that, and the industry, it's clear at this point that it's text plus image, but it's written text, hard HTML5 just implanted in the newsletter as content with everything else. You have links in there, but you make the links specifically clickable.

7:40It's not the whole image that's clickable. And it blends in with the rest of the content. And I think viewers in any medium, whether it's TV or online, are just sort of trained at this point to tune out ads. And that includes banner ads. But when you're reading something from a trusted voice and they're then pitching you a product or service that's relevant to the content that they're already producing and relevant to you as an audience, you're much more likely to engage with that. And we've seen tremendous results with that type of formatting. So, okay. I get a lot of newsletters where it's coming from like a person, like a personal brand person, maybe they're an expert on AI, on marketing, whatever, and they have a huge following and they got a newsletter, right?

8:21And then I open up the newsletter. And in that newsletter, it's this like quasi endorsement style ad. Like, hey, by the way, this is what I use. This is my favorite thing, whatever. And you got to check them out and blah, blah, blah, blah. But it says, you know, this is a sponsored ad, whatever. Does that do particularly well? Like if you're on the hunt for the right newsletter to sponsor, should you be looking like for something from a personal brand or something that's more generic, like a publisher brand? Which one does better? I mean, you know, I think there are merits to both. And again, it depends on your objective, right?

8:53It depends on what type of product you're selling, what sort of service you're selling. I think the benefit overall, and this is sort of what we're getting at with using text and having just a runway is storytelling, right? The ability to make a pitch, whether it's in 40 words, 75 words, 100 words, but certainly more than just an image to explain at least a little bit of your value proposition. And then depending on like how narrow your audience is, like, of course, it's always great to have like a respected voice like a Jay Schwettlson come out, write something positive about your product because it's also relevant to what they're doing.

9:29Right. If you're selling a wellness product, you'd love to have Arnold Schwarzenegger in the daily pump basically pitch that product as something that he endorses. There's just credibility there. And I think credibility in any form of advertising is going to be more effective than just simply running an ad wherever. But the flip side of that is at some point you also want awareness. And I think that there are just some more larger newsletters that are focused, for example, on news aggregation. right? And you just want to get in front of that audience, specifically that audience, like the skim is a good example.

10:03It's women. They're at this point, older, 30 to 45 moms, professionals. I want to be in front of them. And the skim is credible as a publication. And so I want to put my story in front of that audience. So I think both can be effective. It just depends on what your objectives are. And how do you manage your expectation of performance? I mean, I get it that you guys do CPC, you do cost per click or cost per acquisition for your model. But if you're buying a newsletter ad and you're buying it on a cost per thousand, you know, email sent or whatever, what is an expectation of performance? I mean, are there averages that people should be like, oh, yeah, I'll get a 3 % click through rate or whatever?

10:48Yeah, I mean, I think that's tricky, right? Like, you know, you're big in the email space. You know, all the pitfalls with list sizes and open rates and then bots clicking on links before people ever open them, whether they're nefarious or not. And I think like anything else, like you set expectations with that publisher in advance. Like, here are my objectives. How are you measuring things? How are you measuring things? Let's go in with a goal to begin with so that like we're not going to be disappointed. So you could say like you should know, for example, if a publisher says, hey, I've got a list of a million subscribers, but they give you a number like my open rate is 80 percent.

11:25Like that's probably not accurate. I think more of a benchmark you can go off of that's realistic is 35 to 40 percent. And so then you look at that number and you say, what is the CTR average? Well, you know, there's a lot of variables there, right? Like how relevant is the brand of the audience? Like are you trying to get a click or are you trying just to create awareness? so again like setting expectations in terms of these are my goals as a brand this is what i'm trying to accomplish and aligning that with the publisher is going to set you up for success yeah that makes a lot of sense and i think having that conversation is super important all right one more thing before we get on to some stupidity i'm out there i'm like you know what i have a newsletter my company's newsletter goes to 12 000 people maybe i should be taking ads in my newsletter, what is the tipping point where you could actually monetize a newsletter you have or your company has?

12:17How big does it need to be? I don't think there's a floor to it. I mean, I think that, again, it depends what the content's about, what the audience is, right? 12 ,000, you might say that's a small number, but if there are 12 ,000 marketers that are all active buyers for a specific MarTech SaaS product that costs$100 ,000 a year, that's an attractive potential audience for a marketer or for a company that's trying to sell to that audience to approach. So I think it just depends, again, what is the content? If it's sports and you have$12 ,000, you're going to have a harder time monetizing it. You can still do it with backfill, which is a lot of how we fill inventory.

12:57We help publishers grow, be able to pay bills, even though they're not getting flat rate sponsorships because they're smaller. So I think it depends on the type of content. But the reality is, and you're seeing it a lot, like brands becoming publishers. So my wife, she's a doctor. She still had med school loans. We refinanced them with SoFi. SoFi now sends out three or four times a week a newsletter that's got nothing to do with pitching you SoFi. It's just about financial advice. So will they monetize that outside? I mean, it's possible, right? You see the Walmarts of the world and Best Buys becoming publishers, becoming advertising companies.

13:39So I think there's something to that. But yeah, I don't think there's a floor to it. I think there's possibilities all across the board. A hundred percent. And I think you'd also leverage it for trades and swaps and all that. So if you have a newsletter, it's an asset that you should really think about. All right, let's get into some nonsense. And this is totally off script. I didn't tell Jeffrey we're going to talk about this. I know jeffrey lives in orlando orlando florida and for anybody that doesn't know this that's where disney world is amongst other uh entertainment venues so i want to know something what is someone that goes to disney that is a tool that is a newbie that they would do that you're like they don't know what they're doing they're going to disney they don't get it versus you're like pro level disney human like how do you go to disney like we crush it because we know these four things.

14:28Give us the inside Orlando scoop. Probably the most important thing we're going to share on this podcast. I think we need to do a whole nother podcast. Yeah. I mean, so what is the biggest mistake? I think that's maybe one way to look at it. Like people who are like, okay, I'm going to go to Disney world specifically. There's four parks there that are massive. I'm going to go there for four days. I'm going to show up at 8am. I'm going to do every single ride an attraction and I'm not going to leave until midnight. And I do that every single day. And then it becomes like a war of attrition, right?

15:01Like we're just, we're just going to power through versus like, listen, I live here. I get it. I can just pop in and out, but like, I will literally go to Epcot for dinner. And it's just such a pleasure to go there at four o 'clock. Maybe we'll go on a ride. Maybe we won't have a drink, have dinner, get out of there by seven. No one's crying. Um, except for maybe, maybe me because I'm being forced to leave but um yeah i think that just generally like take break days like don't make it your mission to do and see everything in a short period of time because it's just going to be miserable what is the worst ride and what is the best ride to go on whether it's at universal or disney so i think it's what is my favorite um there's a tie right now i would say you have you actually have a list oh yeah oh yeah oh it's i mean it's really like we talk about it on almost a weekly basis certainly my six-year-old has a running count like personally i like velocicoaster at you at islands of venture is like the most insane awesome roller coaster and then i'm really into the guardians of the galaxy coaster at epcot but those are more thrill rides um that's just sort of that's what i like but what is the worst i mean there's a ride at epcot that like will a guarantee to make you sick and it's it's mission space on the red side it's basically like gravitron but in a little box with a screen pressed up to your face so it simulates a rocket launch you can't breathe you can't see and you get off and you just want to lay on the floor and die so okay yeah that's aggressive um so if you come visit we'll go do that yeah no i honestly if i go on a merry-go-round just in a circle i'll throw up i don't know why as i get older i can't do anything that either goes in a circle or loop-de-loop or anything i i vomit have you ever vomited like coming out of a ride no but yeah i'm i'm i like you know i i don't i don't have motion sickness you know my wife she vomits like 80 percent of the time so but that could just that's because i'm just standing there so it could be just about to say yeah i was about to say because you're near her right which is totally understandable well we won't hold that against her.

17:09As a matter of fact, that makes sense. Well, Jeffrey, before we let you go here, how does everybody find you on LinkedIn or your website? Everyone's got to follow you. If you care about email newsletters, Jeffrey is the guy. Tell everybody everything. Yeah. So mediaintercept.com is a great place to start. That's our website. There's opportunities to get in contact with us there. Obviously, LinkedIn, Jeffrey Eisenberg, Media Intercept. You know, we do a ton of business with obviously publishers and newsletters, but again, work with 100 plus brands that are focused on B2B, that are focused on B2C, a lot of direct consumer brands, but we work with the Nikes and HPs of the world.

17:45So we've got something for everybody really and open to conversations. And I think ultimately what we're here to do is help people save time and help them invest in this space in a way that's going to have meaningful impact for their businesses. Yeah, awesome. I suggest getting in contact with Jeffrey. He really knows this newsletter space. Appreciate you being here, man. Yeah, I appreciate you having me. Thanks for the opportunity. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers.

18:20And hook us up with a five-star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time. Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100 % Visit guruevents.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart, and me. Guruevents.com. Check it out.