Case Study for
285 South
Expanding Reach and Driving Newsletter Growth
When Sophie founded 285 South to highlight Metro Atlanta’s immigrant and refugee communities, she secured initial grant funding and a dedicated base of early paying subscribers. However, she faced a strict one-year timeline to make the digital publication self-sustaining before the grant ran out. To keep operations running long-term, she needed to expand her audience and increase monthly subscriptions.
“What struck me most is that Product on Point had really spent time understanding our news site and our mission, and they seemed genuinely excited about what we were trying to do as a news organization”
Product Growth Strategy Services
Client Engagement Model
The Problem: Sophia contacted Product on Point because 285 South had grant funding and early adopters, but needed to grow its audience and paid subscriptions within a one-year timeline.
Two-Week Audit: We reviewed their operations and met with internal talent to evaluate their scale, current workflows, pain points, and technical gaps.
Team Review: We presented our findings to Sophia and her team. The presentation detailed necessary updates to their pricing tiers, UX, mobile optimization, and SEO.
Three-Month Optimization: We followed up with the team to track performance metrics - such as on-site conversions and bounce rates - and recommended ongoing improvements to their social media distribution.
Challenges + Objectives
285 South produces high-quality, hyper-local journalism dedicated to Metro Atlanta's immigrant and refugee communities. To build on its initial grant funding and early subscriber base, the publication needed to expand its online reach and optimize its mobile experience. The main objective was to make it easier for new readers to discover the content, navigate the website, and select subscription options that support operations.
285 South was looking to increase visibility and discoverability beyond its existing networks to reach new audiences.
They wanted to grow newsletter subscriptions and contributions by strengthening the value proposition and clarifying user pathways.
They aimed to improve mobile SEO and accessibility to ensure the site met best practices and supported long-term growth.
Focus Areas
Expand presence across owned, earned, and paid channels to drive traffic to the website.
Increase newsletter subscriptions, contributions, and audience engagement.
Broaden reach through SEO optimization, social promotion, and improved messaging/UX.
Objectives
Recommendations
The Work
To understand how readers interact with 285 South, we analyzed the customer journey and compared each stage with standard media industry metrics:
Awareness: Potential readers first discover the newsletter through channels like social media, search engines, or word-of-mouth recommendations.
Consideration: Visitors land on 285 South to learn more about the newsletter's mission, content, and impact before deciding whether to subscribe.
Decision: Visitors make the choice to subscribe to the newsletter and commit to staying informed.
Retention: Subscribers consistently read the content, stay engaged, and begin supporting the publication financially.
Advocacy: Subscribers become active promoters of the newsletter by sharing content with their networks and helping grow the community through word-of-mouth.
The PoP team recommended focusing on initial reader acquisition (Awareness, Consideration, and Decision) before building out long-term retention and advocacy programs. Establishing a steady subscriber base through promotion, clear messaging, and website updates is the immediate priority, as trying to focus on every stage at once can stretch limited resources.
To help 285 South expand its reach, we reviewed eight media organizations across three categories: immigrant-focused outlets (Refugee Women's Network, The Juggernaut, MundoNow), global models (The Daily Skimm, The Guardian, The New York Times), and regional nonprofit newsrooms (Notivision Georgia, The Baltimore Beat). We studied these organizations to see how they manage audience size, structure their subscription or donation models, and format content for different platforms. This comparison provided practical benchmarks to help 285 South improve its own messaging, pricing tiers, and distribution channels.
Conclusion
Results
Product On Point delivered a strategic roadmap to increase discoverability, strengthen brand storytelling, and drive conversions for 285 South. With clear KPIs for conversion rates (2–5%), bounce rate (<70%), and session duration (2–4 minutes), 285 South now has an actionable plan to grow its readership, boost subscriptions, and expand its impact across Metro Atlanta’s immigrant and refugee communities.
Impact
Our engagement provided 285 South with an actionable plan to transition into a self-sustaining digital publication
Distribution Strategy: Developed a platform-specific social media guide alongside a workflow to launch a WhatsApp newsletter channel.
Technical SEO & Mobile Strategy: Formulated a regular publishing calendar with local keywords, paired with technical optimization steps to fix mobile page speeds, increase low text contrast, and add missing page metadata.
UX & Subscription Architecture: Redesigned website layout elements to include a high-contrast sticky header for mobile/desktop layouts and corrected the inverted annual subscription rates.
Testimonial
