Every marketing dollar has an opportunity cost. Time spent on LinkedIn is time not spent on your newsletter. Money spent on paid social is money not spent on email growth. So which channel actually delivers better returns for B2B founders and marketers?
We looked at the data across our client base and industry benchmarks. The answer is clear.
The Numbers
Email Newsletter Metrics (B2B Average) - **Open rate:** 35-55% - **Click-through rate:** 3-7% - **Conversion rate (to meeting/demo):** 2-5% - **Cost per subscriber acquired:** $2-$8 - **Revenue per subscriber per year:** $15-$50 (for B2B companies) - **Subscriber retention (12 months):** 70-85%
Social Media Metrics (B2B Average) - **Organic reach (% of followers):** 2-6% - **Engagement rate:** 0.5-2% - **Conversion rate (to meeting/demo):** 0.1-0.5% - **Cost per follower acquired:** $1-$5 - **Revenue per follower per year:** $0.50-$3 - **Follower retention:** Unmeasurable (algorithmic)
What the Numbers Mean
A newsletter with 5,000 subscribers generates more business value than a social media following of 50,000. The math is straightforward:
5,000 newsletter subscribers: - 2,000 opens per issue (40% open rate) - 150 clicks per issue (3% CTR) - 7-8 demo requests per month (2% conversion on clicks) - Annual subscriber value: $75,000-$250,000
50,000 social media followers: - 1,500 impressions per post (3% reach) - 30 engagements per post (2% engagement) - 1-2 demo requests per month (0.3% conversion) - Annual follower value: $25,000-$150,000
Ten times the audience on social media produces fewer results than a modest newsletter list. The difference is attention quality. An email open represents 2-5 minutes of focused attention. A social media impression represents a fraction of a second of distracted scrolling.
The Hidden Advantage: Owned Data
With a newsletter, you know exactly who your audience is. Name, email, company, engagement history. You can segment, personalize, and target based on actual behavior. You can identify your most engaged readers and prioritize them for sales outreach.
With social media, your audience is anonymous. You know aggregate demographics. You cannot identify individual followers, track their engagement over time, or reach out to the most interested ones. The platform owns the relationship, not you.
The Compounding Factor
Social media content has a half-life measured in hours. A LinkedIn post peaks in 24-48 hours and then disappears from feeds forever. To maintain visibility, you need to post daily -- a constant content treadmill.
Newsletter content compounds. Every issue adds subscribers. Each subscriber receives every future issue. Your archive becomes a reference library. Readers forward issues to colleagues. The value of each piece of content grows over time rather than decaying.
The Bottom Line
If you are a B2B founder or marketer choosing between investing in social media and investing in a newsletter, the newsletter wins on every metric that matters: conversion rate, revenue per audience member, data ownership, and compounding value.
Social media is not worthless -- it is an excellent distribution channel for driving newsletter signups. But the newsletter should be the core asset. Everything else feeds into it.