What a newsletter sponsorship really costs
A newsletter quotes a price per send and a subscriber count. What you are buying is the people who open it, and the few of those who click. This works out what each of those costs.
CPM on the full list
$30
CPM on opens (what you really buy)
$75
Estimated clicks
80
Estimated cost per click
$3.75
What this means
At your guess, each click costs about $3.75, against $5.42 for a typical Google search click (WordStream / LocaliQ search advertising benchmarks). Ask the publisher for the click count from their last three sponsors — it replaces the guess with data.
How it works
CPM on opens = price ÷ (subscribers × open rate) × 1,000. It is the figure to compare between newsletters, because list sizes include people who never open.
Clicks are your own estimate — no newsletter's click rate is public — so treat the cost per click as a scenario and ask the publisher for real click counts from recent sponsors.
Read next
- Newsletter sponsorship vs display ads
- Where to advertise a newsletter
- Sponsorship marketplaces compared