LinkedIn newsletters: are they what they are cracked up to be?

LinkedIn launched a beta newsletter tool in March 2022 so companies could "publish longform professional content to spark conversations and drive greater engagement" and "build communities around topics that matter most to your customers with recurring Articles from your Page that members can subscribe to."

Since then, news publishers, and then individual users in creator mode, have done exactly that. Owing to LinkedIn's estimated 1 billion user base of working professionals, news companies have amassed large subscriber numbers on the platform.

Sounds good, right? Yes and no. Journalism.co.uk spoke to a handful of strategists who use the feature about what they are making of it and what you can expect if you launch one of your own.

The Wall Street Journal is one of the first news publishers that joined in the beta period in 2022 with its Careers & Leadership newsletter (3m subscribers). We also spoke with media industry journalist Simon Owens (who publishes his own newsletter with 7.4k subscribers), Emily Horton (journalist-turned-consultant who publishes her More Diverse Voices newsletter with 1.5k subscribers), and Anna Hlazunova, who works for live blogging platform Tickaroo and leads its Tickaroo Tidbits newsletter with 187 subscribers.

We gathered their insights and asked LinkedIn for a comment on each point.

You'll start with a bang

When you start a LinkedIn newsletter, a notification will go out to all your connections and followers to subscribe. Larger companies can expect a sudden surge of subscribers that will peter out over time.

WSJ amassed 1m subscribers within its first month, while the next 2m took two years to get. It also tried a limited-run newsletter in the past, Networking Challenge, which also found an immediate engagement that fell in the later editions.

Up until now, resending invites has been a manual task. But LinkedIn says it is improving subscription email notifications: "Each time you publish a newsletter, subscribers get email and in-app notifications and anyone following you will be prompted to subscribe if they haven’t already."

But you don't own your subscribers

What makes platforms like Substack possible to launch entire local news outlets and news titles on is that you can export your emailing list at any point. You own and can retain every single subscription you have earned.

Not the case on LinkedIn as newsletter subscribers cannot be exported, and all those subscribers could, in theory, vanish overnight. This "walled garden" approach is par for the course for any typical social media platform like Facebook, X or Instagram.

"If they allowed me to export my list, that would be a true game changer," says Owens. "But that would require a change to their terms of service and likely some kind of opt-in message where any subscriber agrees to have their email address shared."

He doubts that LinkedIn would ever agree to it because it would involve too much friction and parting with user data. LinkedIn did not comment on this issue.

A fellow tech platform, Tickaroo, was sympathetic to LinkedIn's position but pointed out the platform provides businesses with email addresses as part of paid-for promotions, as they have done through advertising a whitepaper on the platform.

"The leads' emails that are gleaned through this ad can be exported," explains Hlazunova. "So, I'm assuming, LinkedIn recognises the value of a user’s email to its target audience and is using the opportunity to monetise it."

She wondered if LinkedIn would consider a premium option that allows authors to export email lists, but again, no comment from LinkedIn.

It's only worth doubling up on existing content

Except for Tickaroo, publishers and authors we spoke to repurpose content for LinkedIn rather than create bespoke articless. WSJ's Careers & Leadership newsletter is a scaled-down version of its own one, Owen's and Horton's newsletters are a duplicate of theirs on Substack and Flodesk, respectively.

It is often the case LinkedIn newsletters outgrow their counterparts. WSJ declined to say by how much but said its own Careers & Leadership newsletter was smaller than the 3m on LinkedIn. Horton's newsletter is also less than the 1.5k on LinkedIn. Not always the case though, as Owens's own Substack newsletter, with 14k free subscribers, is double his LinkedIn newsletter (7k).

WSJ's head of newsletters, Leigh Kamping-Carder estimates her team spends an hour a week repackaging content for LinkedIn, as it is not worth more time and effort.

"Sometimes, the big numbers look really impressive, but it’s worth asking the question: 'what is that really getting us and how is it serving our goals?'"

Don't hold your breath for clickthrough traffic

LinkedIn wants users to stay on the platform, that much is obvious. Publishers and authors hoping to pull large LinkedIn followings to their own newsletters will be disappointed.

Kamping-Carder adds that LinkedIn fell very short of expectations to get audiences clicking through to publishers' newsletters, based on projections from their own internal data.

There are currently no embeddable links or sign-up forms on LinkedIn that would help with the clickthrough issue. Writers resort to manually pasting their own calls to subscribe. WSJ uses a third-party tool to monitor clickthrough (as this data is not supplied by LinkedIn, more on that below) and Kamping-Carder described it as "vanishingly small".

A manual CTA on WSJ's LinkedIn newsletter

LinkedIn takes this on board: “We're continuing to invest in newsletters and deliver new features to improve the experience for authors and subscribers, including new engagement features and the ability to embed links and it’s paying off."

Data is not much to go on

Despite Apple's dubious history with open rate metrics, newsletters have become a very sophisticated medium that relies on granular data to test and learn.

Newsletter platforms like Substack, as well as news publishers' newsletters, provide a wealth of metrics for a strategy to evolve: custom metric scores, unsubscribers, growth over time, open rate, clickthrough rates, most viewed articles and so on. A/B testing is also crucial.

LinkedIn newsletters, by comparison, offer none of this. Publishers can only see the views of each post (a combination of the people who opened the newsletter and those who saw it while browsing the platform), broad subscriber demographic data (industries and position at the company), and new subscriber profiles over the past month.

Here is a good example of how little you can see on the platform. What does a fellow tech platform make of the data and features on offer?

"While the creation process is exactly what we are looking for, the analytics are somewhat limited. The analytics they provide are very clearly associated with social media goals," says Tickaroo's Hlazunova.

"People who are used to getting typical newsletter stats from other software are probably going to be disappointed with the lack of data. But since we see this newsletter as a part of our social strategy, the data that we are getting is fine for the moment."

LinkedIn did not comment on this.

Don't downplay native engagement

That social strategy is one born out of X becoming less useful, and LinkedIn more useful, for journalists broadly speaking. Tickaroo wanted a way to boost its brand and integrate itself more deeply within the news community. Newsletters also go directly to users, rather than getting lost in the news feed, where company pages seem less favoured.

Hlazunova singled out the ease of the platform, the ability to tag organisations and individual users on posts, and image-linking features as some of the upsides.

Horton agreed, adding she also values the simple and direct communication with readers. Users are only a few taps away from connecting, messaging or following her on the platform. She claims to have had a lot of positive anecdotal feedback and evidence from people she would never connect with otherwise, as well as direct sales business. However, it is hard to tell how much the newsletters have to do with that because of limited data.

"Lots of people are on LinkedIn to develop themselves, so this is a great conversation starter," she says, describing LinkedIn as an authority-building tool.

LinkedIn said it is working on engagement: Comments now show on the right side of your article, making it easier for audiences to engage and spark conversation.

More Diverse Voices LinkedIn newsletter

No monetisation options on the horizon

However, authority and brand building do not pay the bills. News publishers would like to be able to monetise content on the platform, either in premium subscriptions or ad integrations, which are not currently on offer.

LinkedIn was quite obscure about this one. As far as we can tell, they have no plans to roll out monetisation options. We think they are saying LinkedIn helps other businesses prosper and therefore does not need to consider ways to help creators monetise content:

"What's unique about LinkedIn is that it’s not creation for the sake of entertainment – it’s about creation for economic opportunity, and that’s what we’re all about at LinkedIn. Voices on LinkedIn have access to various business opportunities when they create content on LinkedIn, including, but not limited to: speaking engagements; selling products or services, royalties from LinkedIn Learning courses, brand partnerships, and of course, job offers from companies who follow their content."

Customisation coming through

LinkedIn is working plenty on making newsletters more engaging and user-friendly, which was not a chief concern but fairly generic in its current form. Amongst those recent developments:

• Microsoft Designer: Use the AI-powered graphic design tool to create custom templates, sizes and suggestions.
• Member & page embedding in-article: embed member profiles and pages into your newsletter to make it easier to click directly through to those you are referencing.
• Staging links: Staging links for newsletters will give you the ability to view an article’s URL before it’s been published.

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