With newsrooms shrinking and short-form video becoming the most popular form of content for most audiences, experienced journalists and tastemakers have been left wondering if there’s still a market for original written content with a strong point of view. Writers who want to express themselves outside of video content are turning to Substack to curate their recommendations and connect with their audience. For many, the newsletter platform has become a way to regain control over the audience they garnered through years of writing and reporting for outlets they eventually outgrew.

Substack is often an extension of the writer’s online persona, blending the nostalgia of the blogging boom from the early to mid-2000s with a forward-looking vision for the future of magazines and print publishing. Under the subscription model, writers create their own communities, and readers choose which communities to participate in, sometimes paying pricy annual subscription fees. These passionate communities are literally invested in the writers they follow, which creates a more engaged and loyal audience base. Recently, beauty brands have been exploring how to tap into these audiences through ad sponsorships. As the newsletter platform continues to grow, it presents a new opportunity for brands to connect with readers in a more authentic, targeted way. Brand sponsorships on Substack are still in the early stages for both brands and authors, but a few brands have been brave enough to test the Substack waters. BeautyMatter spoke to Medik8, Malin+Goetz, and Versed to find out the key to cracking the Substack code and learn how beauty brands can best leverage this powerful channel.

The Substack Shift

Substack launched in 2017, but it didn’t really take off until 2020-2021, when the pandemic upended normal life. It took another few years for brands to see Substack as a way to reach their audience and connect with consumers in a more genuine and personal way. When it comes to measuring the success of Substack sponsorships, the brands BeautyMatter spoke to primarily looked at click-through rate (CTR), conversions, return on ad spend (ROAS), and coupon code redemptions, where applicable.

Skincare brand Medik8 partnered with Emily Sundberg’s "Feed Me" Substack in May 2024 to gauge consumer interest and better understand the platform’s potential for brand growth.

“We pride ourselves on innovation at Medik8 across all areas of the business, which includes testing and learning across new and emerging platforms where we feel confident that our consumer lives,” Amanda Beckwith, Director of Public Relations at Medik8, tells BeautyMatter. “Substack fits perfectly into this category—a meld of long-form content that is both personal and specific to each author’s community.”

For this test, Medik8 approached the idea of a sponsorship with Substack authors who love the brand’s skincare products organically.

“We are highly selective with our Substack partners,” says Beckwith. “We feel it’s imperative to ensure that the Substack author’s community aligns well with your existing brand community.”

Medik8 found that Substack engagement is quite high compared to other platforms that the brand tracks. Due to the platform's nature, brand visibility within each newsletter is also high, but that doesn’t guarantee success. Every Substack author’s newsletter will have varying metrics, similar to the way that each influencer has a different engagement rate.

“As someone who has worked in influencer marketing for quite a bit of time, I’m not opposed to taking educated risks to test and learn in hopes of finding new forms of success and brand awareness,” says Beckwith.

Medik8 believes the best content partnerships give writers and creators creative freedom. The brand aligns with the authors on concepts and product selection, but the brand also trusts it knows its audience best.

“We’re weaving Substack into our always-on strategy for Medik8, targeting major moments tied to our marketing calendar,” says Beckwith. “There’s a personal and fresh take on content with Substack that makes it the perfect opportunity to discuss a topic like skincare, which needs a higher level of education and is harder to get across on other platforms.”

Substack is quite new in relation to the market, but Medik8 says its consumers are active on the platform—and it has the data to back it up. The brand had a 204% ROAS with its current Substack partnership with Sundberg. Medik8 also reported a significant increase in daily traffic to its US website on Substack newsletter days.

“We're looking to accelerate within Substack but prioritizing partners that align with Medik8's values and core consumers,” says Beckwith. “We’re also taking key Substack partnerships outside of Substack—creating a 360 partnership with our key writers, which includes eventing, social media partnerships, and more.”

The Age of Authenticity

Malin+Goetz is taking a similar 360-degree approach to its Substack sponsorship strategy. The bath and body brand recently activated with Substackers for the launch of its new tomato home spray in three distinct but related ways. To generate buzz, Malin+Goetz sent a PR mailer to several Substackers featuring the brand’s tomato home spray and candle with a custom Carbone Fine Food sauce as a preview of what’s to come. Next, to celebrate this launch, Malin+Goetz hosted a dinner at Carbone for a number of cultural movers, including many New York City-based Substackers. To further amplify, Malin+Goetz worked with Hannah Baxter, author of the Anxiety Beer newsletter for a paid sponsorship that highlighted the brand’s new tomato home spray and drove directly back to retail stores, offering a unique code to her readers.

“Substack today is what blogs were in 2010; they have a highly engaged audience who feel as if they are part of a community versus just a reader,” Malin+Goetz CEO Brad Horowitz tells BeautyMatter. “As we entered an entirely new category with our tomato home spray, we wanted to be strategic with who we spoke to. With Substack being such a growing platform with such highly engaged readers, we wanted to engage with those creators on a multitude of different levels.”

When Malin+Goetz first explored the idea of sponsoring Substacks, the brand looked at the newsletters its own team was reading.

“We wanted to engage with someone who felt authentic to our own team but also to the latest launch,” says Horowitz. “Someone who is highly educated within the beauty and lifestyle space but also has a passion for food and innovation.”

Baxter is a beauty writer and editor and has previously written for The Cut, Allure, Glamour, and Elle. Anxiety Beer is a bi-monthly newsletter that aims to destigmatize conversations around mental health. While this campaign was more of a “test and learn” activation, Malin+Goetz says the brand will continue strategizing on expanding upon Substack sponsorships in 2025. Partnering with independent content creators on Substack uniquely differs from partnering with creators on other platforms, which the brand finds promising.

“There is an extra added level of authenticity when it comes to Substack newsletters, which explains the success of the platform,” says Horowitz. “These creators are highly tuned into their audience but also speak through their own authentic voice versus through a larger outlet.”

The New Frontier

Versed is another skincare brand exploring content partnerships across lifestyle and shopping-focused Substacks. The brand sponsored three Substacks: Things I Buy As A Civilian, Retail Diary, and Gee Thanks, Just Bought It. The sponsored posts went live in late July and August and focused on the importance of double cleansing, featuring two Versed products, Day Dissolve and The Purist.

This initial test was very intentional on Versed’s part: the brand sought out Substacks with varying subscriber counts in the fashion/beauty/lifestyle space that had a retail component to it, which meant the readers are customers who are primed to shop. Like Malin+Goetz, Versed tapped its team to find out which Substacks are resonating with their target audience. The bulk of the list the brand initially brainstormed came from Substacks that its team members swore by.

“A slew of Versed team members are avid Substack subscribers and readers and are constantly comparing notes,” Emma Wesel, Director of Influencer & Affiliate Marketing at Versed, tells BeautyMatter. “And as a brand, our core demographic are millennial women. Those women grew up on magazines and crave the inspiration magazines used to offer—inspiration that they now get from Substack newsletters.”

Sarah Shapiro, author of the Retail Diary Substack newsletter, had previously included the brand in a few newsletters organically, including a deep dive on Versed’s founder, Katherine Power. Versed built on that organic partnership with a Double Cleanse sponsorship in a recent article. The Substack inclusion led to “fantastic” results, with Versed saying it will continue its partnership with Shapiro and hopes to build it into a long-term engagement.

“Substackers have a built-in, engaged community—people who opt-in and pay to read the Substacker’s POV,” says Wesel. “It’s a powerful, prolific tool for incredible content. Testing out sponsored content on Substacks just made sense.”

In addition to these paid sponsorships, the brand has been gifting key Substack writers for potential product inclusion to see how affiliate performs, which led to a feature in Andrea Linett’s I Want to be Her newsletter. This first test proved successful, and the brand plans to continue exploring more partners who could be good fits for future sponsorships.

“Sponsorships on Substack can feel more authentic and intentional because they aren’t a dime a dozen [yet],” says Wesel. “The content is also guaranteed to be served to the audience that subscribes, and will live on, versus some social media post types that expire after 24 hours or are only served to a certain subset of followers.”

Versed believes that long-form content engages readers more intimately than other social media platforms. “When comparing subscribers to followers on social media, the engagement tends to be higher as emails are always delivered (versus being subjected to the algorithm), and there is more storytelling allowed,” says Wesel.

When it came to executing the sponsored post, the brand shared the product focus and some key messaging points that could be included, but ultimately, the brand wanted authors to share authentically why they recommend Versed to their subscribers.

“Their readers are smart and savvy with a spot-on BS detector … they can sense when something seems too sales-y versus reading sincere,” says Wesel.

Substack partnerships are a long-term strategy for Versed. The brand plans to continue building its presence on Substack and is also exploring other creators on Beehiiv, another newsletter platform.

“I think it’s still a widely untapped market,” says Wesel. “I’m beginning to see more ads pop up in Substacks that I subscribe to and read on a consistent basis, but I expect advertising on Substack to become even more prevalent in the coming months [and] years as the platform grows.”