About The Dispatch
The Dispatch is a digital media company providing fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy, and culture. With a growing subscriber base and loyal audience, the organization needed to evolve from a patchwork system into a unified platform that could support ambitious growth, new membership models, and more efficient editorial workflows.
Summary
The Dispatch partnered with camelCase to overhaul its fragmented digital stack and outdated site, which limited growth and blocked premium opportunities. Together, we redesigned and rebranded the site, migrated subscription management to Piano (including payment tokens from Memberful), launched premium membership tiers, built onboarding experiences, and integrated advanced ESP personalization.
The result: new monetization models, higher revenue per subscriber, and streamlined editorial workflows — all supported by a modern, elevated platform.
Challenges
The Dispatch’s existing digital ecosystem presented several roadblocks:
- A fragmented and inefficient vendor stack drove unnecessary costs and complexity.
- The site design and CMS no longer reflected the caliber of their journalism.
- There was no path to personalization, premium tiers, or audience segmentation.
- Editorial teams faced duplicative effort, especially in sending newsletters, which required copying content manually between the CMS and the ESP — a process prone to errors and delays.
From conception to execution, we couldn’t be more thrilled with the incredible work CamelCase did redesigning The Dispatch's website, laying the foundation for a new growth trajectory. We now have a website worthy of the quality of the work our team produces on a daily basis, and the transformation has exceeded all our expectations.
Declan Garvey
Executive Editor at The Dispatch
Solutions
Platform Redesign & Relaunch
We completely redesigned and rebranded The Dispatch’s site, elevating its look and feel while maintaining the stability of WordPress VIP. Alongside the visual overhaul, we streamlined publishing workflows and multi-channel distribution. A major technical lift was the migration of subscription management services — including moving payment tokens from Memberful to Piano — ensuring a seamless transition for subscribers and enabling deeper flexibility for subscription models.
Premium Membership
We launched premium membership tiers that unlocked a new revenue model for The Dispatch. These tiers introduced valuable features such as guest passes, audio versions of articles, bookmarking, personalized content sections, and article-sharing links that allowed readers to bypass paywalls when content was shared directly. Together, these offerings increased the value of each subscription and deepened audience loyalty.
Onboarding & First-Party Data
We created a unified onboarding experience for all members — free, registered, and premium. This flow not only simplified activation but also collected valuable first-party data that powers tailored recommendations and future personalization. By building a foundation of audience knowledge from the first touchpoint, The Dispatch can now segment and engage readers with more precision.
ESP Migration & Personalization
We migrated from ActiveCampaign to Iterable, unlocking advanced automations, segmentation, and personalization capabilities. This move gave The Dispatch the ability to send targeted campaigns, trigger onboarding journeys, and build richer audience relationships — all grounded in first-party data.
Editorial Empowerment
To reduce duplication and errors, we built a custom newsletter plugin that established a single source of truth between the CMS and the ESP. This eliminated manual copy-paste and allowed editors to push content directly to newsletters. We also developed custom content blocks to accelerate entry and introduced sectioning that enables content personalization by access level. These improvements simplified workflows and reduced editorial overhead, letting the team focus on creating journalism rather than wrestling with systems.
Impact
Revenue & Monetization
The Dispatch increased revenue per subscriber through premium membership benefits and gained the flexibility to test new monetization models, including direct ad sales.
Editorial Efficiency & Integrity
Centralized publishing cut duplication and reduced errors. Editors gained new tools for curating, organizing, and personalizing content more effectively, creating a more reliable workflow.
Brand & Partnerships
The redesigned, elevated look and feel positioned The Dispatch as a premium brand. This new presence has supported stronger affiliate and partnership opportunities, signaling long-term investment in the product.
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