Clerk.com uncovers newsletters as a hidden engine behind 12x traffic and 30% of signups
Pause newsletter advertising for 3 months to measure its influence on:
- Site visits
- Signup conversions
- Indirect and uncredited traffic paths
- 20% drop in total traffic and 15% drop in signups after newsletter ads were paused
- Newsletter campaigns influenced 12x more traffic than directly attributed
- 20–30% of signups interacted with a newsletter at least once
- TLDR identified as one of Clerk’s highest-performing partners
- Newsletter ads reinstated with increased investment planned for 2026
About Clerk
Clerk is a complete user management platform that gives developers drop-in authentication, user profiles, organization management, and subscription billing for modern web apps. It handles everything from sign-in flows to session management so developers can focus on building their product instead of user infrastructure.
When turning off newsletter ads backfired
At the start of Q3, Alex Rapp, Clerk’s Head of Growth Marketing, made what felt like a small and low-risk call: pause all newsletter partnerships for the quarter.
Newsletter sponsorships were viewed as an upper funnel distribution channel for Clerk’s educational blog posts and guides.. For such a small team, keeping the content pipeline fueled proved to be an ongoing challenge to support a full calendar of newsletter placements.
“On the surface, newsletter sponsorships were a targeted distribution channel to share guides our team worked hard to create. The main goal was to get in front of developers and give them resources that built trust and ideally influenced them to consider Clerk for their build. We knew it helped drive traffic to our site, but directly attributable sign ups were rare.”
The hypothesis was simple: shutting newsletters off would have minimal impact,and Clerk’s steady channels would keep performing.
Two months later, the data told a different story.
Clerk saw a 20 percent drop in site visits and a 15 percent drop in signups, declines large enough that the team initially suspected broader issues.
The real cause was newsletter inactivity.
Uncovering the hidden influence of newsletter advertising
A deeper analysis showed that newsletters were influencing far more activity than attribution indicated. Newsletter campaigns drove indirect lift as a stepping stone towards conversion, with last-click attribution pointing to direct and organic search traffic. In total, newsletters influenced 12 times more traffic than what was credited through last-click attribution.
“The downstream impact and the role of newsletters in the path to conversion surprised me the most.”
Clerk’s analysis revealed:
- 20–30% of all signups during the analysis period had interacted with a newsletter at some point
- A moderate correlation (r = 0.3, p < 0.05) which is a stronger correlation when it comes to marketing data, given 5–10 touchpoints and a 3–7 day lag
- Newsletter exposure contributed meaningfully to multi-touch conversion paths and re-engagement loops
- In other words: what looked like a small top-funnel test turned out to be a critical part of Clerk’s broader acquisition system.
TLDR emerges as a top partner
Clerk’s list of newsletter partners has narrowed over time as the team optimizes for a high-quality audience and stronger ROI. TLDR ranks as one of the highest-performing channels for both traffic and acquisition impact.
“We run partnerships with a number of newsletters, but that list has shrunk as of late. TLDR is a top performer among our active partners — driving site visitation and signups.”
And TLDR stood out not just in results, but in partnership quality.
“Pri & the TLDR team are great partners. They’re empathetic to our needs and generally more creative than other newsletter partners.”
Once Clerk uncovered the true impact newsletters were having, the strategy shift was immediate.
“We’ve already re-introduced newsletters and have no plans to turn them off, so long as our content pipeline remains replenished.”
Clerk now plans to increase their investment in TLDR moving into 2026.
