How a new ad process boosted Rough Draft Atlanta’s brand perception (and revenue opportunities)

Rough Draft Atlanta is metro Atlanta’s leading hyperlocal media organization.

Alongside Reporter Newspapers and Atlanta Intown, it delivers the Rough Draft suite of newsletters.

Since its launch in March 2021, newsletter revenue has grown 13x.

Named Best Local and Community Newsletter at the Publisher Newsletter Awards 2024, Rough Draft boasts a combined readership of one million across its print and digital products - reaching metro Atlanta’s most dynamic and influential communities.

Growing pains

Like many newsletter publishers, Rough Draft Atlanta’s owner, Keith Pepper, relied on a Google spreadsheet to track ad bookings for the company’s digital offerings.

As Rough Draft Atlanta’s offerings grew more popular and its sales team reached four full-time members, the company began experiencing growing pains.

Without a structured process to guide them, the team relied on informal emails to communicate with advertisers, as well as each other - making it difficult for anyone to track progress on bookings and campaigns.

It was a difficult spreadsheet to work with… very manual!

We needed a tool that was more tailored to the placements in a newsletter.

As a result, routine tasks, such as reminding clients of deadlines and assets outstanding, required an investment of time - and patience. While some team members kept assets with emails, others filed them away in locations specific to them.

With 12 editions published digitally each week - alongside print editions - Rough Draft Atlanta’s sales and editorial team struggled.

And so did Keith. As part of overseeing operations, he found that manually reporting performance - via Mailchimp - took a great deal of time. In addition, both him and his sales team lacked accurate and real-time understanding of slot availability.

“It was a difficult spreadsheet to work with… very manual! We needed a tool that was more tailored to the placements in a newsletter. It needed to allow visibility to our growing sales team - enabling them to see what’s available.”

Why Rough Draft Atlanta partnered with Sponsy

That’s when a colleague recommended Sponsy, the platform streamlining ad operations for media companies across the globe.

From the beginning, it was perfect for what we needed.

Sponsy is designed with lean teams in mind - helping them scale efficiently. Sponsy supports sponsorship management across multiple channels such as newsletters, print, podcasts and social media.

Packed with powerful capabilities, Sponsy enables teams to track and manage efforts throughout the publishing lifecycle: from booking ad space to post-campaign reporting.

“From the beginning, it was perfect for what we needed. Internally, it allowed our sales team to not step over each other’s toes when it came to seeing and securing open slots. And that was when we were only using it as a booking tool… before we got into process and workflow stuff.

“I’ve looked at a couple of other tools since we began working with Sponsy 18 months ago,” recalls Keith. “But I’m really happy with what we are achieving together.”

Straightforward onboarding

We’ve found it really easy to get people trained on Sponsy.

Migrating to Sponsy was straightforward, thanks to the help from its responsive support team.

“We have a very old-school print-focused sales team,” explains Keith. “As you can imagine, they are used to traditional approaches.

“That said, we’ve found it really easy to get people trained on Sponsy. And we’ve been able to show our sales team the importance of putting in the right data to begin with. It means we’re capturing as much data as we can.”

High visibility Ad Inventory

Since implementing Sponsy, Rough Draft Atlanta’s sales team find it much easier to check ad sales and availability.

Real-time accessibility to free slots is particularly useful when team members are creating packages of ads across multiple editions… without worrying about double bookings or missed slots.

Features like this are possible thanks to a platform engineered to tremendously improve the type of collaborative working that drives ad sales and management inventory efficiency. For example, every change made is tracked in Sponsy. This means users can clearly understand the history of a campaign, as well as what the next action is and who needs to take it.

For further clarity, progress and actions are color-coded, alerting team members - at a glance - for issues in need of attention.

Easy asset management

Sponsy understands that ad management can be tough. Each ad involves communication, assets, and performance metrics at least. When these are spread across various systems it becomes even tougher.

That’s why Sponsy provides a structured process where information is stored in a central location. This means no more switching screens for the sales team at Rough Draft Atlanta. With Sponsy, their communications, ad inventory and assets are housed together.

Since they started using Sponsy and keeping everything organized securely in one place, tracking assets for its 12 weekly editions is much simpler.

Personalized customer portal

Sponsy’s dedicated Customer Portal is designed to delight advertisers, nurturing long-lasting partnerships.

Our clients are now putting their assets directly into Sponsy.

That’s speeding up campaign launches and much more.

As well as offering complete clarity on past and future campaigns, Sponsy allows them to provide assets in a central location - quickly and without confusion.

“We are getting better at using Sponsy’s automations and our clients are now putting their directly assets into Sponsy. That’s speeding up campaign launches and much more.”

Time-saving integrations

Sponsy integrates with leading platforms to eliminate repetitive, manual or mundane tasks for media companies, such as copying and pasting data.

It saves me a ton of time - as much as 45 minutes a day!

Rough Draft Atlanta utilizes the ESP integration with Mailchimp. This time-saving feature allows Keith and his team to view ad performance - with complete confidence in its accuracy.

Best of all? It now takes just one click with Sponsy.

“By automating reporting, we no longer need to check multiple places. We just put bookings into Sponsy and then someone else can pull reports with ease. It saves me a ton of time - as much as 45 minutes a day!”

Results 

Since migrating to Sponsy in March 2023, Rough Draft Atlanta has not looked back, thanks to developments including:

• Significantly reduced risk of double bookings and missed ad runs
• Faster campaign launch capabilities
• Enhanced brand perception
• Greater organization throughout the process
• Maximized data aggregation and reporting capabilities
• Quicker Mailchimp reporting (saving <45 minutes per day)

“Prior to Sponsy, we had no integration with Mailchimp, no place for creative and no place for contact. Ultimately, Sponsy allows us to save money just through its efficiency when it comes to reporting and our sales team’s operations. “I also believe it makes us look more professional - allowing us to charge more, thanks to features like the customer portal and automated reporting.”

Looking ahead, Keith and his team will soon be launching an advertiser-facing Storefront - enabling self-booking. One of Sponsy's most recent additions, it's been shown to widen advertising reach and promote hard-to-sell slots while speeding up the process for everyone involved.

But the developments don’t stop there, according to the media company owner: “I remain hopeful that one day we will be able to take advantage of all the automations Sponsy offers…”

Watch this space!