Dedicated Newsletter Sends Bought on Cost Per Click

Publishers quote dedicated sends on CPM against total list size. The number you decide on is cost per click on the primary link: a 45,000-name list at a 65 euro CPM is 2,925 euros, and at a 1.2 percent click rate that is 5.41 euros a click before anything converts. We run that arithmetic against your existing paid channels before approaching a single publisher, and if the ceiling does not clear we say so and the engagement stops there rather than becoming a media plan. How we price an offer: Rate cards are opening positions. We negotiate on the segment rather than the discount. A send to the publisher's 90-day engaged segment, perhaps 40 percent of the file, at 70 percent of card rate, beats the full list at a discount in almost every case, and it protects the publisher's own deliverability, which is why they agree to it. We ask for the last three sponsors in your category and we contact them. A publisher unwilling to name past sponsors has answered the question. What we require before booking: List size and 30-day active count, stated separately. The Gmail complaint rate on their last three sends. Confirmation that the send leaves from the publisher's own domain under the publisher's own consent: your list never moves, their list never moves, and a publisher offering to hand over addresses is offering something else entirely and gets declined on the call. Archive access to at least six previous issues. A written placement date, because a send that slides into the week of your competitor's launch is not the buy you priced. Measurement, and what we ignore: Open rate has been noise since Apple Mail Privacy Protection in 2021 and we do not accept it as proof of anything, including delivery. The primary link is wrapped through a redirect on your own domain so the click log belongs to you rather than to a screenshot from the publisher's dashboard. Attribution runs post-click over 14 days, corroborated against a self-reported source field on your signup form. Two imperfect measures that disagree in interesting ways are worth more than one clean number nobody in the room trusts. Where the flight is large enough we hold one comparable publisher out so the read has something to sit against. The creative: One offer, one link, one landing page matching the email's promise word for word. Dedicated sends fail on the landing page more often than in the copy, because the reader arrives carrying the publisher's trust and a generic homepage spends it in four seconds. We write the email, specify the page, and review the page before we confirm the send. We do not build the page. What we will not buy: Sends priced on guaranteed opens. Files built from sweepstakes, content unlocks or quiz funnels, at any CPM. Placements in an HCP audience where the publisher cannot evidence how the file was matched and verified. Full-file sends from publishers already running above 0.20 percent complaints at Gmail, because their next problem will be attributed to your creative. Networks that will not name the publication before payment clears. Sector notes: In marketplaces, supply-side sends normally outperform demand-side sends by a wide margin, because operator audiences are smaller, more concentrated and read the whole issue. In recruiting, the buy that works is a niche practitioner newsletter rather than an HR trade title, and the offer has to be useful to someone not currently looking. In pharma and medtech we buy only where subscriber verification can be evidenced and the creative can survive medical, legal and regulatory review while remaining readable; if MLR turns the email into a disclaimer, the send is not worth its cost and we will tell you that before you book it. Not for you if: You need a channel that pays back inside a fortnight, or you want a quantity of placements rather than a decision about which two are worth repeating.