How Last Week in AWS Saved $100,000 Per Year

The world of cloud computing takes itself very seriously. Last Week In AWS (LWIA) set out to change that by offering the latest AWS news and updates with a side of snark.

Every week, its small team engages an audience of more than 282,000 via no fewer than three newsletters and four podcasts, a YouTube channel, and a vibrant Slack community.

Engaging an audience of more than 250,000 AWS stakeholders is only possible with powerful content and advertising support.

LWIA Director of Media Operations, Jeremy Tangren explains: “The ads and publications go hand in hand. Without the ads, we can’t do the publications and without the publications, we can’t do the ads.”

“Very chaotic” administration

Newsletters and ads went out, but it was complex and included a lot of overhead.

Managing multiple sponsors for LWIA’s newsletters, podcasts, and YouTube was “very chaotic” when Jeremy joined LWIA in 2022 to oversee publications, ad management, and ad copy.

He recalls: “It was being done by various people who either shouldn’t be doing it, didn’t have time to do it or didn’t have the expertise to understand what they were doing. Newsletters and ads went out, but it was complex and included a lot of overhead."

Around 20 hours a week was needed to manage advertising slots across LWIA’s multiple newsletter, podcast and social media channels - a tall order for a team of just five.

At the time, everything was being managed via a Google sheet or a series of disjointed customized applications within Retool - introducing an element of risk.

“The opportunities for human error were high,” he says. “The responsibilities needed to be transferred from a manager as quickly as possible because a manager’s time is not best spent handling administrative tasks.”

Jeremy knew there must be an easier way of managing these tasks and set out to find it.

Why LWIA partnered with Sponsy

In November 2021, LWIA discovered Sponsy.

Sponsy is the platform streamlining ad operations for media companies. Designed to help lean teams efficiently scale up operations, Sponsy helps publishers manage newsletters, podcasts and social media sponsorships with ease.

“A home for ad copy”

Our ad copy publishing previously took four to six times as long!

Since introducing Sponsy to LWIA’s publishing team, Jeremy and his team waved goodbye to multiple, disconnected Google Sheets and tabs full of data needing manual management.

“We now have Sponsy,” he enthuses. “It’s all structured data that can’t just change its format willy nilly... it has helped us to enforce a number of our ad policies: ad length, format and things of that nature. It gives us a home for our ad copy.”

Sponsy’s structured approach to ad management does more than ensure compliance with policies. Sponsy allows LWIA to significantly reduce the time required to assemble advertising content, while maximizing accuracy.

“We pull that data into our custom publication tool inside of Retool which puts the ad copy in the correct place and assembles the publication and sends it out to the correct publication tool (usually ConvertKit),” explains Jeremy.

“Without these APIs, our ad copy publishing took four to six times as long!”

Deeper data insights

We’re able to slice and dice things and see into the data much more so than we could with Excel before.

Sponsy’s sophisticated analytics and straightforward reporting have widened LWIA’s understanding of their publishing data - including views by publication and sponsor.

Jeremy explains: “At an ad copy level, we’re able to slice and dice these things and see into the data much more so than we could with Excel before.”

Prior to Sponsy, if a sponsor requested metrics for an entire ad run or even to work out how many ads went out for free, it was difficult to respond quickly - or accurately.

“I would have had to go through a Google sheet and do a bunch of dancing to find all those ads,” recalls Jeremy. “And then I’d need to make sure that it was accurate.”

“In Sponsy, I can click three buttons and I can view every ad that the sponsor has ever had - including the copy. It’s so fast. It’s so much simpler!”

Details like this are helping to inform LWIA’s sales strategy. For example, it allows Jeremy to identify opportunities to upsell and squeeze more sales.

Easier sales inventory management

It’s not a CRM. It’s not an order management tool. But it’s a sales inventory management tool for us.

Prior to Sponsy, salespeople would need to liaise with operations to make sales... and not just at LWIA.

When a new salesperson joined LWIA, Jeremy informed her that ownership of the schedule, including all of the ad slots, belong to sales.

He recalls: “She said ‘What? That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never seen that before. That’s certainly not the way it worked at my last place.’

“And I said ‘Nope, that’s how it works here. You own the calendar, so you don’t need to ask me if any slots are available. You don’t have to be burdened by anyone else to make a sale. You can just go into Sponsy and see what’s available.”

The result? “There’s no dependency on ops in order to make a sale. Sales doesn’t have to ask me questions, they’re just looking in Sponsy because that’s their inventory."

“That’s where they go to ask, ‘all right, what can I sell you’? And that is incredibly powerful… It’s not a CRM. It’s not an order management tool. But it’s a sales inventory management tool for us.”

No more detective work

Now I understand the history of every single individual slot which is giving me tremendous insight.

While Sponsy’s powerful infrastructure and advanced automation reduce the risk of costly publishing errors, when mistakes occur, Jeremy feels confident to tackle them quickly and easily.

“I call it playing detective when I try to understand the breadcrumb trail of what happened,” explains Jeremy.

Before he began working with Sponsy, piecing together an understanding of what was promised and what was delivered could take between five to ten hours per case.

“It was a very manual effort, searching through emails, asking questions from sales and the sponsor to attempt to get to the bottom of the issue,” recalls Jeremy.

“Now I have activity tracking. I know when an ad was made. I know when the copy was added. I know if it was moved. I understand the history of every single individual slot which is giving me tremendous insight.”

Results

Sponsy has allowed us to shift our focus from managing operations tasks to a more standard approach that allows us to focus on maximizing revenue.

Since discovering Sponsy, LWIA hasn’t looked back and its small team has achieved a huge amount in that short time:

• Saving $100,000 in resources per year
• Cutting administration by 15+ hours every week
• Slashing newsletter assembly time by 6x
• Increasing advertising accuracy and transparency
• Faster customer service response times
• Deeper engagement with sponsors

“Working with Sponsy has allowed us to shift our focus from managing operations tasks and all this unstructured data to a more standard approach that allows us to focus on maximizing revenue”, explains Jeremy.

For the Director of Media, Sponsy enables him to concentrate his attention on growing the brand and its publications - rather than spending up to 15 hours a week on administrative tasks.

“Prior to Sponsy, I could not delegate these responsibilities to someone else. There was too much tribal knowledge. Too many opportunities for human error. And there were no systems to support these processes.“

“Now, with Sponsy as it is, we have have an assistant who I have delegated all ad copy and publication responsibilities to...”

“As a manager, I now have the time to do my actual job.”