Newsletter audiences should not be an afterthought for advertisers
Meta axing Facebook News may be a move that is widely slammed, but there is now a big opportunity for advertisers with newsletters, according to The Squiz’s commercial director, Kate Watson.
One of the notable things to come out of the possibility that Meta might pull news from Instagram and Facebook completely is that many publishers are now imploring their audience to sign up to their newsletters, and boy am I glad to see it.
The Squiz started as a newsletter business. We launched our daily newsletter, Squiz Today, seven years ago, and have been telling anyone who will listen (including advertisers) that it is an incredibly valuable channel for years now.
We have 65,000 subscribers across our newsletters with an average open rate of 50%. Across a month, over 85% of our entire database read our newsletters. Nearly half of our newsletter audience say they took action after seeing ads in our newsletter. We are the reigning Mumbrella Newsletter of the Year. And if the tech gods fail us and our newsletter doesn’t land in people’s inboxes at 6am, we know about it by 6.05am because our audience gets in touch to tell us: “Where is my Squiz?”
Newsletters like The Squiz with a trusted voice and content specially written for the format have been undervalued by advertisers for too long now. They’ve been tacked on to media schedules and included as ‘value-adds’ – but I reckon their time has come. This is their moment.
