Whose money is in the headline?
Two payments exist, and a newsletter must not blur them. If a customer's company licenses records, SourceX pays that company under its own agreement; the program calls that compensation the Actual Supplier Payout. Your company, as the referring partner, may then earn a reward on that company's first qualifying transaction: by default the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap; further qualifying transactions first agreed within 12 months pay 15%. SourceX pays the reward separately and never deducts it from what the customer's company receives.
So a figure like USD 50,000 is the floor on your reward for a first qualifying transaction, not a figure any customer can earn. It is accurate on a page written for partners, like this one, because partners are the people it describes. Lifted into a customer newsletter, the same words change audience and meaning, and readers will take the number as what their company might be paid.
Advertising law reads a message the way its audience does. The FTC's policy statement on advertising substantiation expects a reasonable basis for objective claims before they are disseminated, and it weighs reasonable interpretations of an ad, including implied claims. A payout headline implies a customer outcome you have no basis for: SourceX has published no typical payouts, and whether any records qualify is decided only in its review. Counsel decides exactly how the statement applies to a business newsletter; the brief below simply removes the claim it would be asked to defend.
The benefit worth an issue, and who signs it off
There is a real story to tell. A customer's company may be able to license operating records it created, such as support histories, project files or dispatch notes, directly to SourceX and be paid for them, while its subscription with you stays exactly as it is. That deserves a lead item if four people at your company agree to it.
| Role | Signs off on |
|---|---|
| Partnerships director | The claim ledger and the disclosure line; owns every reply |
| Newsletter or lifecycle marketing owner | The segment: contacts who accepted marketing email, chosen without product analytics |
| Counsel | Promotional limits in customer contracts and the disclosure wording |
| A customer-facing executive | That "nothing about your subscription changes" is true and will stay true |
On the customer's side, write for the people who run operations, and say plainly that their CEO is the one who would authorize a licensing discussion. A reader in IT may forward the issue; only the CEO can say yes. If the item reads like a recommendation of SourceX rather than information about an option, rewrite it; the guide to introducing without endorsing shows the difference.
The evidence-first newsletter brief
Fill in this brief before anyone drafts copy. If a field stays empty, the issue is not ready.
| Field | What goes in it | Example entry (Illustrative) |
|---|---|---|
| Reader | One role at the customer | Head of operations at customers with established teams |
| The reader's decision | One sentence | Whether to tell their CEO this option exists |
| Promise of the item | What the reader knows after two minutes | Which kinds of their own records might be licensable, and who decides |
| Claim ledger | Every factual sentence, its evidence and a verdict | The ledger below |
| Fixed lines | Disclosure, data and product sentences | Three sentences, wording locked |
| Banned angles | Payout figures, demand claims, deadlines, product data | Listed as cuts in the ledger |
| Call to action | One step the reader controls | Reply to ask for an introduction, or apply directly |
| Measure | What counts as success | Replies naming a CEO who wants a conversation |
The claim ledger. Every sentence that states a fact gets a row. The verdict column is the whole point: ship, rewrite or cut.
| Draft claim | Evidence | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| "SourceX licenses business records directly from companies for AI training and evaluation." | SourceX's own published description | Ship |
| "Companies with 50 or more full-time employees at peak and years of documented records may qualify." | SourceX's who-qualifies page and terms | Ship, with the geography sentence below |
| "Your records could be worth USD 50,000 or more." | None; the figure is the partner reward floor | Cut |
| "We've partnered with SourceX to bring you this." | Implies vetting and a joint offer | Rewrite as the disclosure line |
| "AI labs urgently need data like yours." | No published demand evidence; manufactures urgency | Cut |
| "Nothing about your subscription changes." | Your own commitment | Ship after the executive sign-off |
| "We can help you prepare and send the data." | Puts your company inside the customer's records | Cut |
| "If your company licenses records, SourceX may pay us a referral reward." | Program terms; FTC Endorsement Guides | Required |
The geography sentence, if eligibility appears at all, goes in verbatim: Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 70% of the data is in English.
The three fixed lines. Lock the wording once and reuse it in every issue.
- Disclosure: "If your company licenses records to SourceX after contacting it through this newsletter, SourceX may pay [Vendor] a referral reward. It comes from SourceX on top of, not out of, what your company is paid."
- Data: "We share none of your data with SourceX, and nothing in your account decided who receives this issue."
- Product: "Your subscription, pricing and support stay as they are, whatever you decide."
The disclosure is not courtesy. The FTC's 2023 revision of its Endorsement Guides says a material connection should be disclosed when a significant minority of the audience would not understand or expect it, and that the disclosure must convey the nature of the connection well enough for readers to judge its significance. Customers reading their vendor's newsletter have no reason to expect a referral reward. "SourceX may pay us a referral reward" conveys the nature; "partner content" does not.
What the issue may say about your product, and what it must not
The newsletter comes from the company that hosts its readers' data, and they know it. Three boundaries keep that fact from becoming the story.
- No product numbers. "Your 1.2 million tickets in [Product]" is your telemetry, and printing it tells readers you looked.
- No segment built from usage. Choose recipients by marketing consent and customer type, never by data volume, storage or activity.
- No role in the records. The customer decides what, if anything, to license, exports it from its own systems and shares it only with SourceX under its own agreement. Your product may hold some of those records; hosting them is access, not a say in licensing them.
Records that belong to the customer's own clients are usually not a fit under SourceX's published screening, and the customer's own contracts may limit reuse. The pages on SaaS customer data rights and on whether a vendor trains AI on customer data help readers work through their side, and they are worth linking from the issue itself.
Two versions of the same lead item (Illustrative)
Illustrative drafts for a fictional vendor. Version A is what a payout-first draft tends to look like:
Turn your company's data into USD 50,000 or more AI companies are paying for business data, and as a [Product] customer you're already sitting on years of it. We've partnered with SourceX to make it easy. Click to see what yours is worth.
It makes five claims and can support none of them: an amount, a market claim, a reference to data in your product, an endorsement and an implied valuation.
Version B follows the brief:
Some records your team created may be licensable, and the decision is your CEO's SourceX licenses business records directly from the companies that created them, for AI training and evaluation, and pays those companies under agreements they negotiate themselves. Support histories, project files and dispatch notes are typical of the material involved; whether yours fit is decided in SourceX's review. [Disclosure line.] [Data line.] [Product line.] Reply if your CEO would like an introduction, or apply directly through the link below.
Version B makes two factual claims, both sourced, and three commitments your company controls.
Ship one issue to one segment, then count the right replies
Treat the first issue as a pilot. Send it to one segment and, for the following 60 days, count:
- replies asking for an introduction in which the reader names a CEO who wants the conversation;
- verified applications from those companies, since credit follows a verified application inside the 90-day attribution window and a click on your link does not decide it;
- trust signals: unsubscribes against your usual rate for comparable sends, tickets or replies asking whether you share customer data, and any customer asking for written confirmation.
Opens and clicks only tell you the headline worked, which is the problem this page set out to fix. The guides on measuring content by accepted introductions and separating marketing attribution from referral credit cover the reporting side. Before any introduction is submitted, your company signs the SourceX Channel Partner Agreement; a company that signed it under the name Channel Partner Non-Circumvention and Non-Disclosure Agreement is still covered by what it signed. For how the program looks from a software company's own side, see the SaaS data partner page, and the guides hub for related playbooks.
Next step
Refer a company. No cap on rewards. Default reward on a company's first qualifying transaction: the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap; further qualifying transactions first agreed within 12 months of the first Closing pay 15%. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, including the USD 100,000 Minimum Transaction, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
Once your brief has a complete claim ledger and the three fixed lines, register for a partner link, check the eligibility wording against who qualifies and the reward wording against the program terms before the issue ships.