Newsletter Benchmarks: How to Know if a Newsletter Is Worth Sponsoring
Before spending money to sponsor a newsletter, you need a way to judge whether it's actually worth it. That means benchmarking — evaluating a newsletter's key metrics against clear standards so you can tell a strong sponsorship opportunity from a weak one. This guide covers how to benchmark a newsletter before you sponsor it.
Why Benchmarking Matters Before You Sponsor
Every newsletter operator will tell you their newsletter is worth sponsoring. Without benchmarks, you have no way to evaluate those claims. Is a 40% open rate impressive or average? Is a 00 placement fee fair or steep? Is a 15,000-subscriber list large or small for the niche?
Benchmarking gives you reference points to answer these questions, so you can make sponsorship decisions based on data rather than the operator's pitch. It's the difference between hoping a newsletter works and knowing it meets a standard worth paying for.
The Key Metrics to Benchmark
Open Rate
The percentage of subscribers who open each issue. This is the single most important engagement metric — it tells you how many people actually see your sponsorship. General reference ranges:
- Below 25%: low engagement, proceed with caution
- 25-35%: average for most newsletters
- 35-50%: strong engagement
- Above 50%: exceptional, usually smaller tightly-curated newsletters
Always ask for the last 90-day average, not an all-time best. For a deeper breakdown by audience type, see our guides on B2B SaaS newsletter benchmarks and consumer newsletter open rate benchmarks.
Click-Through Rate
The percentage of readers who click links in the newsletter. This indicates how action-oriented the audience is. Ask the operator what click-through rates previous sponsors have seen — reputable operators will share this.
List Size Relative to Engagement
A large list with low engagement is often worth less than a small list with high engagement. Benchmark size and engagement together, not in isolation. A 5,000-subscriber newsletter with a 45% open rate frequently outperforms a 50,000-subscriber list with a 15% open rate.
Audience Specificity
How precisely does the newsletter's audience match your target? A tightly-defined audience ("B2B SaaS founders") benchmarks better for a matched advertiser than a broad one ("business professionals"), even at smaller size.
Watch for the Apple Mail Inflation Effect
One benchmarking pitfall: Apple Mail Privacy Protection automatically pre-loads email pixels, which inflates reported open rates for newsletters with significant Apple Mail readership. A newsletter reporting a 55% open rate may have a true engaged rate closer to 35-40%. Ask operators whether their reporting accounts for this.
How to Get the Data to Benchmark
Benchmarking requires data, which means requesting media kits from newsletters you're evaluating. A media kit should include subscriber count, open rate, click-through rate, audience description, and pricing. Newsletters that can't or won't provide this are a higher risk.
The challenge is having enough newsletters to benchmark against each other — a single newsletter in isolation is hard to judge, but ten newsletters in the same category give you a real sense of what "good" looks like.
Benchmarking Starts With Discovery
You can't benchmark newsletters you haven't found. The first step is surfacing a pool of relevant newsletters in your category, then requesting media kits and comparing them against these benchmarks.
Lettrbase is a newsletter discovery database that lets you search by category and surface a broad pool of newsletter leads — giving you enough options to benchmark against each other and identify the newsletters genuinely worth sponsoring, rather than judging any single one in isolation.
