Summary
BlueLena offers management of paid acquisition services to publishers. The tools and processes are primarily used to grow email lists with brand new contacts. The tools can also be used to retarget existing readers, such as targeting highly-engaged non-subscribers to drive new subscriptions.
Paid acquisition is currently used by publishers on Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram) which are known to have the best results (cost per lead), as well as Google Ads, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc.
How the ads work
BlueLena connects a publisher’s Facebook and Instagram accounts to their BlueLena email platform (powered by ActiveCampaign). Using automations, we import your current audience into Facebook’s ad platform, allowing us to exclude current contacts from seeing ads, and to target “lookalike” readers. We can further target lookalikes of your most engaged readers or of your current donors or subscribers. The platform also allows targeting by location (city, state, neighborhood, etc. and vicinity), interest areas and many other attributes.
Each month, we’ll propose ads that either repurpose a recent, engaging story from your site, or promote newsletter signup in general. Users on Facebook or Instagram see a post, and then must enter their email in order to continue on to the website. Via another automation, emails are automatically imported into your account and contacts are signed up for newsletters and entered into a welcome series. They are tagged for ongoing tracking.
An example of the three steps a user will go through on a Facebook ad to sign up. See the story, enter email, click to read story.
Expected costs
BlueLena has seen cost per lead vary from publisher to publisher and from month to month.
Historical average costs per acquired contact (CPC):
| Year | Average cost per acquired contact (CPC) |
|---|---|
| 2023 | $1.65 |
| 2024 | $1.79 |
| 2025 | $1.69 |
To begin using our paid acquisition services, there is a $250 setup fee to get connected to your social accounts and build out automations. Each month, publishers must spend at least $500 on ads for us to manage the campaigns, and we charge a 15% management fee. As an example, a publisher spending $1,000 a month on ads would be charged $150 for our management.
The fee entitles publishers to one ad campaign which may contain multiple ads, which is updated/refreshed with new ads once per month for as long as the publisher utilizes the service. For each $5,000 of monthly spend, BlueLena can update the campaign and refresh ads one additional time each month. For any additional updates, it is billed at 2 hours of work.
Process
Expect a roughly two week timeframe for BlueLena to get access to your platforms and set things up, and then we’ll propose ads and ask for your approval. Prior to the beginning of each month we will confirm that month’s ad spend amount, propose stories to feature in ads or ask for suggestions and then provide a preview of the ads for your approval.
Contact management
BlueLena recommends that publishers using paid acquisition on an ongoing basis set up a specific list cleaning automation to account for unengaged contacts that accumulate over time, in order to mitigate any negative impacts to open rates and overall list health. This is an optional automation (6.0 hours for setup) that will be recommended after setting up paid acquisition.
Without additional cleaning provisions, BlueLena recommends limiting the use of paid acquisition to ensure no more than 20% of a publisher’s list is acquired via paid acquisition.
Ready to get started? Email support@bluelena.io