Email advertising via newsletter

[turbohost]

Hi Guys,

I'm rather new to advertising via e-mail newsletters. I've got an e-mail database of about 40.000 emails (I harvested these via my sites, these are 'unpromoted' email addresses) and I've just sent my first newsletter with a very original idea :-> I will try to send this newsletter once per week with only one sponsor in it. I was just wondering now ... are there some baselines available of the average return you get on such a mailing? If just 0.1 % buys some stuff from my sponsor I will still have 40 leads. Somebody wants to share some experiences?

Thx,
Turbo

[turbohost]

No feedback? Come on guys!

[openmind]

What do you mean by 'unpromoted email addresses? Those 40.000 didn't subscribe to your newsletter themselves? If that's the case you don't publish a newsletter but send unsolicited email messages for commerical purposes. We have a database of about 5000 subscribers. Those people chose to opt-in and they can leave our newsletter any time with one single click. So far only a very small number has unsubscribed and we get about 10 new readers per day.

[turbohost]

These 40.000 people agreed to receive a maximum of 1 mail per week from my site. One mail like an ad or a newsletter ... whatever. So far only a very small percentage of the users unsubscribed and yes ... they do have an unsubscription link.

Unpromoted like in 'no ads were sent to these email addresses before'

I'm especially interested in the return of the ads in the newsletters. Do you post ads in your newsletters and if so, where do you place the ads (top, bottom)?

Thx,
Turbo

[openmind]

For about 3 years the newsletter was without any ads. Half a year ago we started to put a short text ad along with a link at the bottom of each issue.

[turbohost]

Hi Openmind,

Do you get a good response from these ads? Is it worth the effort?

[openmind]

Well, we measure the response to our newsletter by more parameters than just the reaction to the ad which is difficult to track anyway. So far we have had one company that has been sponsoring our newsletter so we don't have any results in terms of sales trickered from the ad in the newsletter. However, we also included a short ad to our own affiliate sub site and for some reason our sales have been up. At any rate, a newsletter is worth the effort as it is an ideal means to establish a long lasting relationship with your users.