How Beauty Plans to Crack Substack

Business of Fashion

a day ago

One morning in July, a group of fashion and beauty publicists gathered on Zoom for a masterclass on how to get their clients featured on the newsletter-based social media platform Substack.
Lindy Segal, a beauty journalist, and Bella Gerard, an editor-turned-content creator, hosted the webinar titled 'Everything You Need To Know About Substack Before Your Clients Start Asking.' Segal and Gerard, who began publishing their respective newsletters on the platform in 2022 and 2024, found themselves being pulled aside at work events by PR friends to get their advice on Substack.
'Publicists and agencies are being asked about Substack by their clients — or they know they're about to be — but they aren't sure what they should be telling them so we wanted to offer them a primer,' said Segal. Out of the 43 attendees, half represented beauty brands. The duo will host a second session later in August due to demand.
Beauty is a small but growing category on Substack. Brands are in the process of figuring out how to crack the platform — or moving full-speed ahead with Substack strategies in the hopes of finding (or building) small but engaged communities. Cosmetics brand Merit advertised its first fragrance, in fall 2024, with a back page New York Times ad and a sponsored edition of Emily Sundberg's newsletter Feed Me. Clean makeup line Saie introduced From the Saie Office in May 2024 as a direct line between founder and chief executive Laney Crowell and brand fans, while Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty launched Rare Secrets in April to give a behind-the-scenes glimpse into team culture and product development. Skincare label The Inkey List will launch its newsletter this fall.
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'Substack brings back that early-2000s blogging energy: personal, dynamic and free-flowing,' said Crowell. 'It feels less about the quick scroll and more about storytelling.'
Treating the platform like a blog means that beauty experts that have broken through are those who show latitude. Makeup artist and Jones Road founder Bobbi Brown has one for her personal and private brain dumps, facialist Sofie Pavitt has one for detailed acne care guides and Dieux co-founder Charlotte Palermino has one for industry hot takes. There is no shortage of beauty perspectives on Substack, but there doesn't seem to be an abundance of them either — only a slim fraction of newsletters on the platform's Fashion & Beauty section are focussed on the latter exclusively rather than occasionally.
Beauty gets less attention on Substack than sports or streetwear, but audiences still flock to writers with unique voices.
(BoF Team)
The growing corporate interest in the category, however, poses risks to the 'personal, dynamic' quality that makes Substacks so readable. And while it takes time to find the right editorial tone, brands can find it hard to justify an investment that probably won't lead to any sales boosts or viral moments… at least not immediately.
A presence on Instagram and TikTok has become table stakes for beauty companies, but not every brand needs to be on Substack. Even early adopters, like the makeup brand Too Faced, have since put their Substack strategies on pause. Those that really want to unlock the benefits of the platform, which can cultivate engaged followings quickly, have to invest time and headcount into the strategy.
'Readers are extremely engaged, and they really respond to intentionality,' said Segal, noting that brands stuck on metrics wouldn't fully recognise the value of a Substack audience.
Forging a Deeper Connection
Substack offers brands something unique among the various social media channels they use to connect with audiences: a platform that makes users slow down and engage with longer, more thoughtful content as an antidote to doomscrolling.
'I've never been like a shock jockey, with the endless hot takes,' said Pavitt, who likes the long-form format of Substack that encourages deeper discourse.
As they dip into the platform, brands are hoping to stay nimble by creating the content themselves or with employees already on staff. Pavitt writes her Substack herself — 'it's just my time and expertise,' she said. Brown's is created by her and her assistant, while Rare Beauty's director of creative strategy, MacKenzie Kassab, heads up Rare Secrets.
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The most popular accounts on Substack come from writers like Jessica Defino, whose newsletter, The Review of Beauty, has amassed over 130,000 subscribers. Saie, hoping to replicate that success, hired former Allure editor Paige Stables to help craft their newsletter's voice.
'You need a good writer to be able to connect with people,' said Kirbie Johnson, the host of the podcast, Gloss Angeles, and writer of her own Substack, Ahead of the Kirb. 'Having your social media team run your Substack without having any editorial background and understanding of a writing voice is not the move.'
'I now see Instagram, Tiktok, Threads, Facebook and Snapchat as entertainment platforms, not social media,' said Johnson. Frequent changes to social media algorithms have all but guaranteed a slowing of organic reach, leading to a sharp drop in views and likes. 'I'm seeing people with millions of followers get 59 likes on Instagram,' she said. 'Not a lot of people are engaging as much as they used to on Tiktok and Reels. And brands have it ten times harder than a content creator.'
How to Stick With Substack
Colette Laxton, co-founder of The Inkey List, is currently in the throes of conceptualising and writing the brand's Substack, debuting early fall. In line with The Inkey List's mouthy tone of voice, planned headlines for posts include 'We sold Hyaluronic Acid Serum at a loss for years... and we'd do it again. Here's why.'
Laxton will be driving the concepts and writing the posts, with support from her team on layouts and editing. She sees Substack as freeing, with no word count constraints or the need to be 'thumb-stopping.' 'It's where curiosity meets connection, and where we have the opportunity to build a real homegrown community versus other traditional marketing channels,' she said.
She plans to embed product when it's relevant, but doesn't want it to feel salesy. Shopping-focussed newsletters may lend themselves to affiliate linked lists, but experts did not see Substack as a channel suited to pushing product. 'We want people to subscribe for the content even if they never buy,' Laxton said.
Substack 'challenges traditional marketing techniques seen across social media, e-commerce and CRM,' said Goodwin. 'It's hard for brands to have a sincere, genuine voice when the ultimate goal is marketing their brand.' While other social media outlets have become quasi shopping destinations, or places for brands to encourage conversions, everyone The Business of Beauty interviewed for this story said that Substack was not the place to push that agenda.
For now, many beauty brands don't even have a paid subscription model. 'We've never thought of monetising our Substack content,' said Saie's Crowell, who describes the return on investment of the brand's newsletter in 'engagement, brand awareness and press drivers.'
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Bobbi Brown's eponymously named newsletter costs $7 per month, with all proceeds going to a New Jersey charity, Reach Out Montclair. 'For me, it was never about the money, but if people are paying for a subscription, I want to make sure they felt it was worth it,' Brown said. Paid subscriptions have access to giveaways, exclusive perks and interviews with her celebrity friends. Also, they can reach out to Brown directly.
Segal also stresses the different nature of the Substack beast: Smaller subscriber counts can still be powerful. While she has 2,000 subscribers, 'my newsletters regularly get more views than stories that have been published on major magazine websites,' she said.
Brands that feel the genuine need to communicate outside of traditional marketing may find a foothold in Substack. As Laxton put it, 'Social is fast and reactive. Substack is intentional and reflective.'
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