For Rough Draft Atlanta, newsletters aren’t just a distribution channel. They’re the engine powering its digital reinvention. 

Recognizing their value, publisher Keith Pepper rebuilt editorial workflows, audience development and advertising around a newsletter-first model. The result is a digital business that has grown from 2% to 28% of company revenue while maintaining a profitable print operation.

As publishers search for durable sources of digital growth, Pepper’s approach illustrates how treating newsletters as a core business strategy transforms them into a platform for audience growth, premium advertising and digital revenue—offering practical ideas for publishers looking to strengthen their digital business.

A focus on digital opportunities

Pepper acquired Springs Publishing in 2020 when the previous owner was looking to retire. “I saw an opportunity,” he shared, outlining that the otherwise profitable company had virtually no digital income. Shortly after, the publisher’s first daily newsletter, Rough Draft Atlanta launched. It has since become not just the flagship newsletter, but the primary way news is produced and consumed for the publication. 

Pepper explained that the idea for a daily local newsletter came about partly because of his own desire to have a product which served him as a local. “I wanted to read a [local newsletter] every day. And we also needed a way to engage with advertisers and readers in between those print dates,” he outlined.

There was also very limited competition back in 2020, just before Axios Local formed. “There were a handful of local media companies that had an RSS feed newsletter, but there was no personality-driven newsletter like a Morning Brew or the Daily Skimm here in Atlanta.,” Pepper pointed out.

Pepper’s instincts are increasingly being echoed across the industry. The New York Times recently announced The Local, a new newsletter initiative in the Twin Cities designed to deepen reader relationships through locally focused journalism and serve as a model for future markets. While the Times’ goals differ from those of an independent local publisher, both strategies reflect growing recognition that newsletters can become a primary product for building audience habits and direct relationships, not just a way to distribute stories.

Print is still vital to Rough Draft Atlanta’s business, and Pepper credits the revenue as giving them breathing room to experiment with what worked in digital. “Even today, our revenue is 70% print,” he shared. “Being a digital-only publisher is difficult, so this [revenue] means we can try things others of a similar size wouldn’t.”

Still, Pepper’s bet that newsletters are the new morning paper seems to have paid off. 

A newsletter-first business

At Rough Draft, newsletters showcase the best content from the day. But that’s not simply a case of rounding up what’s on the website. “Everyone’s daily tasks are to get the newsletter out – that’s the most important thing,” said Pepper, emphasising the whole team’s newsletter-first ethos. “People love to set habits. They love repetition and predictability in the mornings.”

The newsletters then form the basis of the monthly print editions, with issues from writers in specific verticals like food and entertainment translating into columns.

From a daily newsletter to a portfolio of personalities

Almost six years later, Rough Draft Atlanta has a portfolio of a dozen newsletters. Flagship daily newsletter Rough Draft goes out every morning six days a week. The rest, covering topics from art and food to LBGTQ+ and books go out at various times across the week in the afternoons.

It’s unusual for a smaller hyperlocal publisher to have topic-specific verticals in this way. But Pepper pointed out that print papers contain everything from local news to film reviews and recipes. So he sees the newsletter verticals as a way to then feed into the print product later on.

Rough Draft is formulaic, with the aim of giving readers an overview of everything from key local and national headlines to the weather and events. The others are more tailored in format, centering key writers and personalities.

“In Atlanta, the food scene here is like a sport,” Pepper explained, highlighting that they were able to attract EiC Beth McKibben over from national media company Eater to come and lead Side Dish. “In her old role, she was sending out a five-day-a-week newsletter that was just clickbait. Now, she’s sending out a narrative newsletter twice a week which gives her a chance to tell her stories.”

The publisher’s most recent vertical is in health and wellness. The Reset, edited by Laura Scholz, explores current health, wellness and beauty topics. “It’s a huge industry in terms of all the money that people are spending on health and wellness and longevity, so I’m excited about scaling it,” said Pepper, explaining the reasoning behind the launch.

Notably, having a newsletter-first mindset is also leading to some interesting experiments on social media. The publisher’s newsletters all now appear as Reels, with short clips and narrations summarizing the day’s key developments.

Not only does this offer a way to showcase the newsletter and its primary functions to younger audiences, but it opens up additional revenue opportunities. Daily Reel editions of the newsletter can be sponsored within the content itself, rather than relying on revenue shares with Meta or other platforms.

A premium ad offering

Local newsletters have historically been trickier to monetize than general news. Ad slots have to be budget-friendly to local businesses, but selling such ad space is often not worth the time of dedicated salespeople.

Rough Draft has been helped in this respect by having a strong base of print advertisers. But Pepper pointed out two areas they have also focused on to help drive demand. The first is having a self-serve portal for clients where they can upload, schedule, and see clicks and impressions in real time. This takes an administrative burden off sales and marketing teams, and also allows easy rebooking. 

“We’ve had really great success with renewals,” Pepper added. “We’re completely transparent in what we give [advertisers], which I think for a local media company is pretty remarkable.”

However, Pepper has also refused to run programmatic advertising on either the website or the newsletters. “We just wouldn’t make any money,” he said, noting low CPMs which devalue the space. “It’s a much better user experience all round that all of our ads are local companies.”

The newsletters themselves have limited inventory. This drives up value and also makes for a better experience for readers. Pepper said that Rough Draft is getting more inbound leads from local businesses than ever, and their newsletters are sold out months in advance.

Digital revenue now accounts for 28% of overall revenue, up from 2% in 2020. This is a mix of branded content, newsletters and digital display, which is difficult to separate out as some is sold as packages.

Quality over quantity

Although growth is a priority, Pepper said that maintaining quality, engaged users is vital to keeping advertisers happy, as well as maintaining control over costs. 

Rough Draft Atlanta has nearly 50,000 subscribers to its newsletters, with a 48% average open rate to its flagship daily edition. Clean lists are a priority, with people who haven’t opened in a few months put through a re-engagement cycle. If they continue to not open newsletters, their email address is archived. 

Pepper also encourages the team to go out in-person to encourage newsletter growth, including engaging with festivals and local events. “We’re out at the Farmer’s Market on the first Saturday of every month, collecting email sign-ups there,” he explained. They also see some success with referral campaigns, and QR codes to the newsletters in their print product. 

In the short term, the greatest growth potential for Rough Draft is in reader revenue. All its content is free, including the papers and newsletters. But the publisher has managed to increase reader revenue significantly year-over-year. 

“We’ve already eclipsed what we did all of last year, and that’s running a little over 2% of our total revenue,” Pepper said. He now wants to explore member events, and adding more value for those who contribute.

Pepper said that he was figuring much of the strategy out as he went along. But he had the benefit of coming to the business at the ideal time. By 2020, it was clear that most national brands wouldn’t win the scale game, let alone a local organization. As a result, he’s never attempted programmatic or many of the other ‘quick win’ traps others fell into.

But he also spotted early on that there is still a demand for a concise, daily summary of news that matters to people’s lives. As publishers increasingly seek to leverage their audience relationships as the basis for digital growth, Pepper’s centering of this need in a newsletter product strategy has transformed them into a platform for growth, premium advertising, and digital revenue.