The women’s workwear brand M.M.LaFleur is transitioning its editorial platform to Substack, positioning itself as a pioneer in branded newsletters and community engagement.
M.M.LaFleur, a well-known women’s workwear brand, is making strides in content-oriented marketing by migrating its editorial platform, The M Dash, from its own website to Substack. This transition, which took place in February, positions M.M.LaFleur as one of the early fashion brands to utilize Substack for a branded newsletter, gaining a subscriber base of approximately 90,000, most of whom belong to the brand’s existing audience.
In a statement to Modern Retail, Maria Costa, M.M.LaFleur’s director of brand and integrated marketing, articulated the brand’s philosophy towards content, stating, “We’ve always seen content as a critical part of our brand. Our customers aren’t buying new clothes every week, but we want to stay in their inboxes, sharing stories and styling advice, so we’re top of mind when they are ready to shop.”
The shift to Substack is reflective of a broader trend in the brand marketing landscape. Companies have begun transitioning to this platform as a direct-to-consumer marketing tool, with other brands like The RealReal recently launching their own newsletters. M.M.LaFleur’s approach, however, diverges from the norm as the brand chooses to produce and control its content directly, rather than rely on external writers or marketing firms.
Initially launched in 2014 as a WordPress blog, The M Dash has evolved from offering style advice and personal essays to becoming an essential retention tool for M.M.LaFleur. The brand’s move to Substack is partly driven by the platform’s discovery features which allow potential new audiences to find and engage with their content. According to Maddie Kim, the head of editorial at M.M.LaFleur, “Even though brands are sort of just getting on it, Substack has been on our radar for a long time. It just made sense with the type of content strategy we’ve always had.”
Innovative engagement is a focal point for M.M.LaFleur on Substack, distinguishing their strategy from that of more traditional blogs. With functionalities that allow readers to interact through likes and comments, Substack promotes a two-way communication channel that M.M.LaFleur intends to utilize for community-building and customer feedback. “The goal of The M Dash is, yes, to sell clothes,” Kim explained, “But it’s also to build this community and to drive awareness and to make sure our customers get to tell us what they want to hear, and hear that reflected back.”
M.M.LaFleur is not the only brand leveraging Substack’s capabilities, but it is among the limited few engaging deeply with its features. With Substack boasting over 35 million subscriptions, companies are beginning to experiment with the newer functionalities, which include live video features. M.M.LaFleur has indicated plans to explore these offerings, though specific details are yet to be disclosed.
Grace Clarke, a marketing consultant, highlights the potential advantages of being an early adopter of Substack’s features, suggesting that brands could gain insights into effective content strategies before the platform becomes oversaturated. She noted, “Right now, most brands are treating Substack like a blog with an email list. This reminds me so much of that blue sky feeling when brands were just excited about Instagram in 2012.”
As part of their content strategy on Substack, M.M.LaFleur is cautiously transitioning some of its older archive to the new platform, emphasizing prominent guest contributors with a solid presence on Substack. Metrics regarding direct sales remain a secondary focus for M.M.LaFleur, although early data shows promising trends in conversion rates for visitors coming from the newsletter.
Costa noted, “We’ve always seen The M Dash as more of a top-of-funnel awareness tool than a hard sales driver. But if we can build that relationship through content, eventually, we hope, they’ll become customers.” Maintaining reader trust is essential, and M.M.LaFleur has stated that it will not utilize the space for advertising or paid subscriptions to preserve a high-quality experience for readers.
With their proactive approach to establishing a foothold on Substack, M.M.LaFleur aims to define successful branded content standards in the evolving space. Costa remarked, “We’re used to being early adopters in content marketing. We see this as an opportunity to define what good branded content looks like on Substack before the space gets crowded.”
Source: Noah Wire Services
