Even Ted Lasso name-drops this app  🥳

The first thing Ella Edwards asks me is whether I’m on Substack. (My answer: Of course I am. We bonded instantly.)

Partiful’s Community & Communications lead has been a Substack evangelist since college, so much so that the New School graduate even turned her 2025 senior thesis into one.

She credits the platform not just for what it’s done for independent writers, but for what it’s done for Partiful, the party-planning app that’s become so ubiquitous it’s being casually referenced on shows like Ted Lasso and The Pitt.

Here’s how Edwards is fueling that momentum through community-driven storytelling, and what she thinks it takes to build a brand point of view that people actually want to be part of.

Friday Feature 

Alongside handling press and comms, Edwards focuses on curation and community for Partiful’s Explore page, which now features events globally, along with nine curated city pages spanning New York, LA, London, and beyond. One of her biggest wins thus far has been taking the company’s blog off its website and onto Substack as The Guest List.

It’s just one example of how Edwards pairs community-first marketing with a sharp editorial instinct (it helps that she has a journalism background). HubSpot’s own Cyan Zhong recently broke down Partiful’s adept brand strategy, writing that Partiful “turned a functional object (a party invite) into a status signal.”

Treat your brand like a newsroom 

When Edwards started, Partiful already had the right idea: a space to show how real users use the product. But Edwards felt a static blog was like “speaking to a void.” 

“What you’re writing has to exist in some sort of an ecosystem,” says Edward. 

She applied that philosophy to the authoring of it, too. After writing the Substack mostly on her own, it wasn’t long before she realized it would better thrive as a community effort, powered by people already mastering Substack. “A newsroom works because there are multiple people reporting,” she adds. “You can’t make a brand just one voice.” 

She shaped an event to meet writers already on the platform, framing it as a mock community board meeting about the state of socializing in New York. Guests filled out little slips with their hot takes; audience members then came up and read their takes aloud, and the room held up yay or nay signs.

“From there, I was able to meet a lot of amazing contributors that ended up being kind of our editorial board,” says Edwards. “It’s probably my favorite event I’ve ever done, just because I felt like it really did a good job of like meeting Substackers where they are.” 

Depth is measured in many ways

“People are measuring Substack the same way they’re measuring the success of a Reel,” says Edwards. “They’re looking at how many people read this, how many likes did it get.”

She believes that’s backwards thinking. Metrics are useful, yes, like the fact that Partiful’s open rate is in the 50s — Edwards’ threshold for a strong open rate starts at 45%.

Other success KPIs aren’t quantitative. She also watches softer signals, such as people tagging Partiful in Substack Notes the way they’d tag a brand on Twitter. 

“Someone’s passively scrolling through TikTok or their Reels and stopping for a second,” says Edwards. “They might be engaging with the post, but it doesn’t have the same longevity as someone sitting down to read a Substack and engaging with your brand that way. It’s brand loyalty in a way that doesn’t really have a specific KPI.”

The same goes beyond Substack. When Partiful turned up in the show Off Campus, a screen grab of an invite with everyone checking the guest list, nobody stopped to explain what it was. “We just become part of the everyday conversation,” Edwards says.

Events are the future of editorial

As obsessed as she is with Substack, Edwards sees undeniable value in IRL programming. 

“Community only really happens in person,” she says, pointing to Semafor, the news outlet known for its live events, as a strong case study.

“Events are the best lever both to build brand loyalty and to deeply understand your users and the community you’re operating in. It gives your words extra weight, and it builds a world — what your users and readers are stepping into.”

To promote the release of its cards, for example, the team staged a JCPenney-style photo studio, inviting people in to pose for the kind of nostalgic Christmas portraits you’d once get at the mall. For another event, Edwards gathered 20-plus artists and creators to build a holiday art market in the West Village.

Partiful also amplifies events its users create, from the viral Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest to a San Francisco picnic that drew thousands of RSVPs after Edwards featured it on Explore.

“The event itself might be two hours, but the buildup — the momentum, people meeting and seeing one another before — is a huge part of why it’s successful,” says Edwards. “Events now have so much longer a life than the three or four hours they last.”

This week's email was brought to you by Brianne Garrett. Editing by Laura M. Browning.  

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