How to use audience data to sell ads 🧲

👋 Today, how do you use audience data to sling more ads?! 

Punching GDPR in the teeth aside, let’s dive in! 🚀

Howdy gang! Today, I’m handing the reins over to Niklas, founder of Megahit, which helps newsletters enrich audience data. Various clients, or just people I know, have used this data to double or triple certain ad sales metrics.

So I thought he should he should impart some wisdom in your inbox today…

How to use audience data to sell ads 🧲

Before CJ Gustafson had good audience data, selling ads was a struggle.

He had been writing his newsletter Mostly metrics for a little over a year. Readers loved it. Advertisers, however, were hesitant. Selling ads was hard.

This all changed once he had good data on his audience.

CJ doubled his prices overnight. He started working with the biggest of names. He has been selling out all ad slots months in advance. He’s had to send his newsletter three times as often, start a podcast, another newsletter, and a dinner series to fulfill sponsor demand. Today, Mostly metrics is one of the best media businesses I know.

It turns out it’s very powerful to know exactly who is reading your newsletter.

If you know your readers’ names, their titles, and the companies they work for, you do ad sales on easy mode.

Note: This article is mostly written for B2B newsletters. In B2C, you will need different strategies.

🖖 How to use audience data

1) Build a killer media kit 🎨

Let’s imagine the initial talks between CJ and his long-term sponsor, Brex.

Brex is a SaaS. They target finance professionals, preferably with decision making power, at companies of a certain size. They will only spend money if it gets them in front of these people.

If CJ cannot tell them how many of these subscribers he has, they will not spend money with him.

However, if CJ has data to prove that he can get Brex in front of 800 CFOs that fit their description, that’s incredibly attractive to Brex. Each of these customers might be worth 5-7 figures to Brex if they sign a deal.

So if CJ can prove with data that he has who Brex is trying to reach, it is an easy decision for Brex to advertise with him.

Many newsletters are dishonest in their media kits. Being able to prove it with data removes all doubt.

Here’s what you should have in your media kit:

• A general description of your audience and your content

• A percentage breakdown by:

  • Job function: For CJ, those could be “Finance”, “Founder”, “Marketing” or “Product”.

  • Seniority: “Founder”, “C-Suite”, “VP”, “Director”, “Manager”, “Individual Contributor”

  • Industry: “Tech”, “E-commerce”, “Consulting”

  • Company size: “1-20”, “20-50”, “50-200”, “200-1,000”, “1,000-10,000”, “10,000+”

  • Country: “US”, “UK”, “Canada”, ...

• Optional: Industry-specific information. For example, a real-estate newsletters might include statistics on assets under management.

Additionally, once you talk to a potential sponsor, ask them about their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Then run the numbers on your audience to calculate how many subscribers match the sponsor’s ICP.

This has made CJ a lot of money.

2) Find sponsors among your subscribers 🕵🏻‍♂️

Sam Havelock, the CEO of SOFX, has done this successfully. It has made him over $50,000.

He recognized that your own subscribers will be your best advertisers. Your subscribers know what you do. They like your content. They are your fans. When you talk to them, it will be the easiest sales conversation you’ll ever have.

Thus, Sam went through his subscriber list and looked for fellow CEOs. He identified about 600. Then he reached out to them one by one. A staggering 70% were happy to have a call with him. They’d talk about their businesses and whether they could help each other. Many booked ads.

Sam has sold over $50,000 in ads from this. He even stopped his outreach for a while because they were booked out.

In general, when you do this, you’ll want to find marketers, founders, and CEOs on your list. Build a connection. At some point, bring up advertising. This is sales on easy mode.

(Dan can attest to it. This strategy has worked well for him when working with his clients.)

3) Segment your list for targeted sends 🎯

This is a more advanced technique.

Google and Facebook make a lot of money from showing ads to the right people. With audience data, you can do the same.

You can offer sponsors to send a dedicated email (separate from your newsletter) to a small portion of your audience. For CJ, that could be the group of CFOs that Brex wants to reach.

The advantages are clear: extra income while not fatiguing all of your audience with ads. Sponsors pay good money for dedicated, targeted sends.

Jacob Donnelly from AMO, for example, regularly does sponsored email sends. I’d be surprised if he charged below 5 figures for them. (For AMO in particular, I’m not sure if these sponsored sends are targeted. They might go out to all subscribers. However, it doesn’t change that advertisers pay a lot for them.)

🤷‍♂️ How to obtain audience data

1) Surveys ⏳

Ask your readers what they do for work. At minimum, ask for name, title, and company name.

If you want, you can also ask for additional information such as industry, revenue, or assets under management. This depends on your niche.

One option is to ask subscribers for this data directly after they sign up. Marketing Max does this successfully. He has a great post-signup form. He told me 70% of his subscribers fill it out.

Another option is to make these fields required to even sign up for your newsletter. Then nobody can subscribe without filling them in. This might reduce your signups.

However, compare the following:

1) A random Gmail address that has no further data attached to it. 2) Knowing that a subscriber is the CEO of a $100M company. The latter might be worth $5,000 to your business if you monetize them properly. The former might be worth $3.50. It can make sense to have fewer signups but know more about them. Aviation International News does this.

2) “Complete your profile” emails ⏰

You might have a long list of subscribers who didn’t give you their data when they signed up.

You can send them periodic emails to “complete their profile.” Make it as easy as possible for them to give you their data. This will improve your response rates. For example, you can make it as easy as clicking a link.

Let’s say CJ wanted to do this. He’d first send an email “What is your job function?”. This email would include clickable links for “Finance”, “Founder”, “Marketing”, and 3 other job functions he cares about.

When a subscriber clicks on a link, the job function is stored on their profile. A few weeks later, he’d send another email “What is your seniority level?”. People could click on links for “Founder”, “C-Suite”, “VP”, etc.

In general, asking for information on signup will always give you higher response rates than asking later.

3) Enrichment with Megahit 🙋‍♂️

Megahit is a software I’ve built to get you this data without asking your subscribers.

Based on your subscribers’ email addresses, it finds their names, job titles, company names, LinkedIn profiles, locations, and more. You don’t have to ask your readers any questions. It even works for personal email addresses!

Megahit automatically generates all the audience statistics mentioned above. You can put them right into your media kit. It also allows you to easily find marketers, founders, and CEOs among your subscribers. You can then sell ads to those. Plus, Megahit plugs into your ESP (Beehiiv, Kit, Mailchimp, etc.) to enrich all new subscribers as soon as they sign up, and many other things.

Both CJ and Sam are happy users of Megahit. They have used it heavily to achieve the outcomes described above.

Check out Megahit! I’d love to give you a demo.

If you want to dive deeper into audience data and how to use it to increase your revenue, you will also enjoy my newsletter Audience Doctor. It will teach you everything you need to know. Subscribe!