The 2 Types of Newsletter Acquisitions

Hello, mostly people and a few bots who open every email the minute I send it.

Yesterday, noted media business commentator Jacob Donnelly, who runs A Media Operator, announced that he had acquired adjacent industry pub Toolkits, which covered both publisher monetization and brand content.

A newsletter on newsletter acquisition!

Some broad strokes:

• Toolkits, which was run by Jack Marshall and Shareen Pathak, two journalists and media execs, appears to have not published anything in 3 months

• Donnelly is not expanding their current business— rather, he is rolling their current Mailchimp-based (yuck) list into his own

  • He’ll send his content to their list directly for a month, and then anyone who doesn’t unsubscribe will be added to his existing list and CMS

• Toolkit’s pro subscribers will receive one quarter of A Media Operator Pro ($200 per year) for free, and then will have to opt-in with their credit card

This looks to be a distressed sale given that it’s basically a list buy, and the old brand appears to be going away after the website is turned off in 6 months.

Why I Find This So Interesting

LOTS of people (including me, and some of you reading this newsletter) are building content-based email audiences right now.

Statistically, most will fail to turn that into a sustainable media business.

But unlike websites or social accounts that die a slow, poorly-updated death, email audiences retain a good chunk of their value as they represent a targeted audience within a given niche (if grown well).

ERGO I think we will see A LOT of newsletter acquisitions like this.

There are 2 broad types.

2 Types of Newsletter Acquisitions

1) List acquisition: Acquire an audience from a similar publication to grow your list

2) Expand portfolio: Acquire a newsletter that will continue operating to expand your portfolio (think local newsletter bundling to build a larger media co.)

Each has its challenges.

🤹The beauty of highly-engaged newsletters is that they are often deeply personality-driven— as is the case with A Media Operator and Toolkits.

❌ Many are lifestyle businesses that simply won’t port well to new ownership, especially if the existing author(s) doesn’t come with it.

🙅‍♀️ The list acquisition in particular comes with the risk that the audience just might not like the new author as much → lower open rates, more unsubscribes, more spam. Boo.

📉 There’s also the logistics of porting a list to a new CMS or IP address. It’s doable, of course, but requires opt-ins, welcome emails, and other acknowledgments and signals to maintain quality.

💡 At Access Media, we’ve struggled with how to port over our existing larger lists (databases) from Mailchimp to our content-based newsletters on Beehiiv, FOR THE SAME BRAND, let alone a different one.

📪 Done wrong, you can send poor signals to email service providers (ESPs) and hit more spam boxes, never mind lower open rates and engagement.

📫 Done right, you could instantly grow your audience by orders of magnitude.

✅ The expand portfolio model is a bit more clear-cut as you aim to keep the brand as-is.

🪡 But it still comes with the re-platforming risks and need to maintain the same content quality, which is always difficult with content acquisitions.

I’m guessing Donnelly saw an opportunity to acquire a like-audience cheaper and more efficiently than other methods, so he took it. But I’d recommend building lots of segmentation into those old subscribers before they come over.

What Can You Do?

As you build your audience, think both about how well-positioned it would be if you decided to sell AND what types of acquisitions would make sense for you to grow.

Would your business benefit by adding existing newsletters in other verticals, or by subscribers adding to your list?

Some X Posts I Liked or Wrote

He’s not actually burning $1B per month. It’s more like $1M.

More celebs and athletes are understanding the power of newsletters.

Subscribe to My Podcast

Listen to the latest episode of my podcast, Monetize Media (or better yet, subscribe here)— LOL Newsletters Aren’t Dead:

My background:

15+ years experience in digital media

Founded CrossingBroad.com → sold to XLMedia in 2020 as one of the largest US sports betting affiliates

SVP, North America Sports, XLMedia 2020-2022: oversaw $40M annual SEO affiliate business

Now:

Local Newsletters: Founded WalkingTheBoards.com (18k subscribers)

President, Access Media: 15 hyperlocal news websites and newsletters throughout Philly area and South Jersey + sports site OnPattison.com 

Owner, Tip News: Tip.News Unbiased daily news newsletter (50k subscribers)

Affiliate Consulting: Help publishers monetize through affiliate marketing

Be sure to follow me on X (@KyleScottL) and LinkedIn.