How to get sponsors for a local newsletter
Last checked October 28, 2026.
Local newsletters are mostly paid for by local businesses. A sponsor is buying one thing: the attention of people who live near them. This page covers how to show that, how to price it against published rates, who to ask first and how to keep them, with no promises about what a newsletter will bring in.
The short answer
- Make a one-page media kit: who reads, how many, how often they open, and what a slot looks like.
- Price a slot with the CPM formula, then check it against what other local publishers charge.
- Ask the businesses your readers already use, starting with ones that sell to people who just moved in or are about to buy.
- Label every sponsored item, report results after each run, and offer the next run before the last one ends.
- Or lease a town on MailerDot, which sells the listings and shares each sale with you.
1. Show what a sponsor is buying
A sponsor wants to know three things before they pay: how many people get the email, how many open it, and whether those people live where the business is. Your email platform reports the first two. The third is the point of a local newsletter, so say it plainly: the town or towns you cover, and where readers sign up.
- Subscribers, and the open rate over the last month.
- The town or towns you cover, and how often you send.
- What a slot looks like: a logo and two lines at the top, a block in the middle, or a dedicated email.
- Two or three past sponsors or readers who would vouch for it, once you have them.
2. Price the slot
Newsletter ads are priced per thousand subscribers (CPM): the price divided by the number of subscribers, times 1,000. A 10,000-subscriber newsletter at a $25 CPM charges $250 a placement. Small lists usually charge a flat rate instead, which is simpler for a local business to say yes to. Published rates:
| Source | What it says |
|---|---|
| beehiiv, newsletters under 5,000 subscribers | $50 to $250 a placement |
| beehiiv, general consumer newsletters | $15 to $35 CPM |
| Daily Voice, local sites | $199, $299 or $599 a month per town, on a 12-month minimum |
These are other publishers’ prices, not a promise of what yours will sell for. Start near the low end, sell a month rather than a single issue, and raise the price for new sponsors once the slots fill.
3. Ask the right businesses first
- Businesses whose customers all live nearby: dentists, gyms, salons, restaurants, hardware stores.
- Businesses that want people at a moment of change: real estate agents, movers, banks and credit unions, insurance agents.
- Anyone already advertising locally: on the high school scoreboard, in the church bulletin, in the town Facebook group.
- Event organizers, who need a crowd on one date and know what a ticket is worth.
Write a short email or walk in with the media kit. Ask for one thing, such as a month at the top of the newsletter, and say when it would start.
4. Keep them
- Label every sponsored item as sponsored. The FTC’s CAN-SPAM guide expects ads in commercial email to be identified as ads.
- Send the sponsor the numbers after each run: how many got it, opened it and clicked their link.
- Offer the next month a week before this one ends, and give a returning sponsor first choice of slot.
Letting MailerDot sell the listings
Selling sponsors one by one is the part many local publishers find hardest. MailerDot sells flat-price listings in every town it writes for: a business listing is $10.00 for 30 days in the town’s directory, or $25.00 with a mention in the daily email once a week, and event listings are priced the same way. Anyone can lease a town for $10.00 a month for a town’s first 1,000 subscribers, plus $5.00 a month for each additional 1,000. The operator’s business leads every edition, and the operator receives 50% of each listing MailerDot sells in the town, after fees.
A MailerDot town lease is a software subscription, not a franchise or a business opportunity. MailerDot makes no claim, promise or projection about what a town will earn — the listing share is a percentage of sales MailerDot makes, and a town may sell none.
See whether your town is available →