Here's The Thing About Sponsor Revenue No One Ever Talks About

It’s natural, when thinking about sponsors and revenue, to focus on filling the funnel with leads and prospects (especially early on).

But whenever I talk with people who’ve done millions in ad sales, they all say the same thing: Renewals are where most of your profit comes from.

That's the part Heather Hunter spends her days thinking about.

She’s a sponsorship strategist, focused on revenue and retention, and works with newsletters to manage their client ops on a fractional basis.

We caught up recently to talk more about what newsletter operators are getting wrong on the renewal/retention side, including:

For more from Heather, be sure to connect with her over on LinkedIn.

Heather came up as a copywriter and SEO in the agency world before finding her way into a role writing conversion copy at The Average Joe back in 2020, which had hundreds of thousands of subscribers at the time

“I was really new to the newsletter space at that time,” she said, “and it felt like stumbling on a hidden treasure in terms of jobs and ways to monetize writing… I distinctly remember seeing the first IO and realizing how much money one ad could make."

Coming from a world where content monetizes in pennies-per-click, the economics of newsletter sponsorships hit differently, and she very quickly rose to take on more and more of the ad ops.

“While I was learning about newsletters and the newsletter economy, I was also learning about how to do everything from the back end in terms of ad sponsorship and leveraging those agency skills to manage the relationships that the founder and the saleserson and you know just kind of really contribute

Most people conflate ad sales and sponsor ops, but you can think about it like this: Sales is getting a sponsor to say yes. Ops is everything that happens after that.

The moment someone signs an IO, Heather says, you're essentially "setting the table for them to experience your company."

Everything from that point on – how you collect their assets, how you communicate the schedule, whether you send a test, how you report results, etc – shapes their impression of you and determines whether they renew.

The newsletters that treat this as an afterthought are the ones constantly scrambling for fresh leads, because their sponsors don't come back. The ones that get it right end up with a calendar that largely fills itself.

When I asked Heather what mistakes she sees most often, her first answer was: Most newsletters don't spend enough time thinking about, “What is this sponsor's experience going to be like, from the moment they sign to the moment they get their results?”

Specifically, there are a few key moments worth thinking through:

This is the first thing Heather brings up with every client, and the thing she says makes the biggest single difference.

A brief is a document that tells the advertiser:

Don't just say "send an image." Specify the image size, and tell them where to drop the file.

"Make it as easy as possible for them," she said. "Guide them through the whole process."

Keep this up to date too, she said.

Newsletters evolve. Ad formats change. She's seen briefs that were still describing formats the newsletter had quietly moved away from, because nobody had updated the doc. That's the kind of small thing that creates confusion and erodes trust with advertisers who are already dealing with a dozen other marketing channels at the same time.

Once you have the assets, the question is whether the sponsor needs to see the ad in action before it goes live.

Heather's rule: always clarify, and when in doubt, offer one.

The main reason a sponsor wants a test send is typically to make sure the links work, and that your UTM parameters are intact and the link survived whatever transformations happen inside your newsletter builder.

A broken or misconfigured link costs you credibility. So get clear on what kind of test-send the client wants, and build out a good test-schedule to make sure it’s in their inbox with time to spare.

If a sponsor has signed a longer campaign, they may want to run multiple copy variations to see what resonates with your audience. That means you need a process for handling revisions without it creating operational chaos, especially if you ever want to hand this work off to someone else.

“I would say that people refreshing their copy more often is better because they want to keep that audience attention,” she said.

That also helps with social listening data for you and the advertiser.

“[When] I see that one version is performing a lot better, I know I've hit on a particular pain point that my audience has,” she said. “So I can discern what angles are working better, what their values are, what format is working better.”

Between the signed IO and the renewal conversation, Heather says there are three moments that matter most.

The Introduction. Their first impression of you (or your account manager), which usually comes when you introduce yourself and set expectations. Keep it clear and keep it simple. Remember that they're managing a lot of marketing channels at once and probably don’t want a ton of inbound from you; anything you can do to reduce friction is a good thing.

The Execution. This is probably most-related to the section above – Is everything ready on time? Has the ad been approved? Are you confirming that you're both aligned before the send goes out? This is where holding their hand a little bit is appropriate, as long as you're not hovering.

The Follow-up. This is where things most often go wrong. After the campaign runs, a lot of newsletters just let things trail off. Don't do that. Send the reporting. Give them open rate and clickthrough data. Be forthcoming. And then, when the time comes, actually ask them to renew. A lot of people are afraid to bring up the renewal conversation, but often the sponsor is just waiting to be asked.

This was something I hadn't been thinking about before our chat: When a newsletter is consistently published (with a copy online), it creates a content library that AI engines are actively consuming and learning from.

Which means a long-form editorial mention of an advertiser in your newsletter can reach beyond your subscriber base.

In an era where brands are increasingly trying to control how AI describes and recommends them, this is a meaningful thing to include in partnership pitches.

"Narrative control is going to be more and more important in terms of advertising over the next 10 years," Heather said. "It's what everybody wants to do – change how AI describes them and recommends them."

She's still working on how to measure this. But it’s worth keeping in mind as you head into your next meetings

If you run a newsletter and the back-end of your sponsorship program feels like organized chaos, Heather's the person to talk to. You can find her on LinkedIn here, or check out her website here.

She’s also launching a newsletter of her own called Mother Money, which will be focused on unique money-making opportunities for moms.