Howdy!

📊 My list of the 50 biggest newsletter sponsors of 2023 is only 1 referral away. If you have just 1 newsletter friend, what are you waiting for…

Asking for free growth aside, let’s dive in! 🚀

1. Drive urgency in deals, the last point links them all together.

2. An awesome newsletter newsletter

3. Newsletter News

4. A joke so bad, that it’s… nope it’s just bad.

^{Close deals quicker}

Since 2024 is around the corner, let’s look at how to drive urgency and close those lingering conversations.

Of course, these strategies aren’t just for year-end.

🥇 Discounts

Not ideal, but effective.

While discounts wield a potent influence in decision-making, it's important to approach them carefully. Discounts, if overused, risk devaluing your brand as a publisher and may send unintended signals to media buyers (plus, you get paid less!).

To mitigate this, carefully frame the discount within the context of a limited-time opportunity or exclusive offer. It’s important to give a reason behind the discount, here are some good reasons you can use:

• “Christmas is coming up, let’s wrap this up so we can both relax.”

• “We’re confident in the alignment here, so we're happy to drop the pricing for the initial test to get this off the ground and look to the future!”

• If the brand is very performance-focused, you can be more direct “We have some empty inventory coming up, so let's do this at $X, on Y date, so we hit your CAC, then go from there.”

The danger of time-sensitive discounts is that the buyer will note the price, if they’re interested, then come back in 2/3 months and demand the discounted price. It’s then an uphill battle to get to your original rates.

The best way to offer discounts is to lead with questions to properly understand their KPIs and targets. Then, you can structure your discount around their metrics, increasing the likelihood of closing. Plus, this prevents you from lowballing yourself too much!

Use discounts sparingly and thoughtfully.

Here’s a good article on the pros and cons of discounts in B2B sales.

🔒 Use scarcity (the ad calendar)

Another obvious urgency method is using dwindling calendar availability. It’s important to do this honestly and gradually. What do I mean by gradually?

If you’ve been having a sales conversation for 4 weeks, then suddenly out of nowhere you start talking about how you only have 3 slots left next month, it might come across as a sleazy sales tactic (rightfully or wrongly!).

The right way to do this is to talk about your availability from day 1, as soon as you pitch/propose. The established your calendar as a finite resource, and gives you natural reason to follow up (decreasing availability).

Ensure that you’ve asked/understood the brand’s timeline first. Then mention availability straight away. Letting them know you have plenty of demand and driving FOMO.

Sew the seeds early, and gradually tell the scarcity story.

Another good scarcity tactic:

• Only having 2 (for example) alternative investing brands per month, and informing the brand that you already have 1 signed and others interested.

Use your circumstances to your advantage and be honest.

Scarcity tactics, if done poorly, will fail, and leave a poor taste in everyone’s mouth. Here’s a great article on How ‘Implied Scarcity’ Can Drive Success.

🐑 Current Trends

For example, let’s say that you run a financial community for retail investors. You run a newsletter, various events/webinars and other content options, all centred around investing.

Recently, in response to popular demand, your community has been hosting lots of webinars on hedging with gold. You can use this to drive urgency with any partners offering gold or hedging products. Running an engagement during heightened interest in the underlying topic/asset will maximise results. We all know how fickle the news cycle is these days, so this will instil FOMO!

Current trends can be micro (specific to your audience, like the above), or macro (wider trends, e.g. the price of bitcoin, inflation, etc.). Using one, or ideally both of these, in addition to driving urgency, should also boost campaign performance. Assuming you’re matching the trends to the partners effectively.

🖇️ SELL PROPERLY

This is the most important, without doing this, most other urgency approaches just won’t work.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, ASK LOTS OF QUESTIONS.

Sales is a discipline where if you do a few foundational things well, you’re already putting yourself ahead of most. Discovery questions are one of those foundational things.

Don’t just tick the box, genuinely seek to understand the prospect. What’s important to them? What’s their ICP? Do they have other campaigns going on right now? Do they have upcoming product releases?

You may uncover a product release, upcoming initiative, webinar series (etc.). Latch onto these, then pitch your campaign as something that will enhance, or at least compliment them. Then you have a true timeline/urgency that wasn’t even your idea.

The most effective urgency story is discovered and told by the prospects themselves.

🧐 Recommended Reading

I discovered another newsletter newsletter this week. They look at holistic ops, not just revenue!

Game of Letters shares proven blueprints and tactics used by the most successful newsletters.

Subscribe to broaden your understanding of what the best NLs are doing.

📰 Newsletter News

📢 Shout out to Brandon Storey, who just started a newsletter Storey Time, all about his journey to making $100k/year writing online.

👋 Wouter, a friend who used to sell ads at The Milk Road, launched a sponsorship tracking platform, check it out.

📈 The biggest media agencies released forecasts for 2024 ad spend.

🤖 This 1-person newsletter make $250k/year, here’s how he’ll 3x that in 2023.

📊 How Luca makes $300k/ year from his newsletter

👏 How to respond to brands emailing you, detailed walkthrough.

🤣 Inbox Banter

Why did the email go to therapy?

It had attachment issues.