How Simpli.fi drove 7x ROI in 3 months of using Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social

Simpli.fi, an advertising success platform, is devoted to building the most relevant connections and maximizing relevance for its clients, including more than 2,000 agencies, brands and media teams. In a typical month, Simpli.fi’s programmatic advertising solutions and workflow software help more than 30,000 advertisers execute over 140,000 campaigns of all sizes and budgets across connected TV (CTV), mobile, display and other media types.

“We automate online advertising for our clients,” said Spencer Traver, Director of Content at Simpli.fi. “But unlike traditional demand-side platforms (DSPs), Simpli.fi doesn’t lead with buying advertising on a segment basis. We’re built on our data management platform (DMP), so we can provide granular data—giving our clients plenty of targeting options and insights. For example, they can target audiences based on demographics, what content they’re reading online or what physical locations they visit.”

While Simpli.fi helps advertisers take a data-driven approach to their campaigns to drive optimal performance, the advertising technology company is working to elevate its own online presence. In April 2023, it launched a major rebranding initiative—and a critical facet of that effort is an employee advocacy program supported by Sprout Social’s Employee Advocacy platform. According to Traver, since Simpli.fi piloted the program in February, it has seen almost $90,000 in estimated earned media value (EMV).

Our employee advocacy has returned nearly $90,000 in Earned Media Value in just three months. That means we’re already 7x our ROI. So, communicating the value of our investment in the advocacy program internally has been straightforward.

Spencer Traver
Director of Content

Tapping employees to reintroduce a changed company with a unified brand message

Until recently, Simpli.fi hadn’t prioritized its corporate social media strategy like it hoped to. But after making several acquisitions in the adtech space, the business decided it was time to elevate its online presence and internal processes to reintroduce Simpli.fi as a transformed and unified brand.

“We aligned the launch of a new social media strategy with the brand transformation—and we moved quickly to get employee advocacy live a few months in advance,” said Traver. “Employee advocacy is an easy, interactive way to get people involved in sharing our story. We wanted to use it to help create a sense of belonging, internally, not just around the brand transformation, but as an evergreen effort moving forward.”

When Traver was evaluating technology to support Simpli.fi’s employee advocacy program, he realized that Sprout would provide an obvious, cost-effective solution. Simpli.fi has used the Sprout platform since 2015, primarily for social media management tasks such as scheduling and publishing. “It was easy for us to expand our use of Sprout to include Employee Advocacy,” said Traver. “But we also appreciated that it wouldn’t mean adding another external tool or training our staff to use a new system when it didn’t make sense.”

There’s a real sense of belonging that comes from having a platform for employees to access high-quality content that they can use to help tell our brand story. And Sprout makes the whole process so seamless. It makes you wonder, ‘Why doesn’t everybody do this?’

Spencer Traver
Director of Content

Forging a quick path to user adoption and ROI with Sprout

The results Simpli.fi has seen since piloting Employee Advocacy speak to the ease of getting people on board with using Sprout’s platform. In addition to the 55% adoption rate achieved in the first quarter of the program, Simpli.fi realized nearly $90,000 in estimated EMV.

Advocacy is also helping to build camaraderie and cohesiveness across the newly expanded workforce. The sales team is currently the most active on the platform, representing 53% of sharing activity, according to Traver. “Our potential reach from the sales department alone is at almost a million unique users because everyone has such large networks online,” he said, noting that the customer success and development teams are also highly engaged, as are some executives.

But what’s been especially interesting to watch, Traver said, is how enthusiastic Simpli.fi employees retained from the previously acquired companies are about the employee advocacy rollout. “We told these employees that we hoped they would want to be a part of this effort, and some of them have become our most active participants,” he said.

What are the benefits of employee advocacy? You’re putting your brand in the marketplace more often and in more relevant places. You’re also taking your content a step further. But I think the real secret sauce is the connectedness it creates within your own company.

Spencer Traver
Director of Content

Monitoring growth to double down on audience engagement

Traver isn’t alone in tracking the performance of Simpli.fi’s employee advocacy campaign. He works closely with Mackenzie Land, who joined the company’s marketing team in the fall of 2022 and took on the role of Social Media Coordinator in March 2023.

“Now that we have Mackenzie on the team, we can truly focus on executing a full social media strategy—including a robust video strategy, which we didn’t have before,” said Traver. He explained that as part of that work, he and Land keep a close eye on various metrics to track social media performance, including reach, impressions, audience growth rate, total engagements and engagement rates.

Land says one of the best parts of her job is using Sprout to track the growth in engagement rates and experimenting with other reports in Sprout, like Profile Performance and Post Performance. “Sprout’s Reports are helping us learn how to make the most of every social channel and what content types best suit our audiences’ natural experiences,” she said. “Through various tests, we’ve discovered how to boost total engagement by adding more relevant photos and videos to posts, for example.”

“Employee advocacy helps us to expand on those metrics we’re reporting on,” Traver said. “And we’re already seeing huge results from the program.”

To learn more about how Sprout can help your business achieve its goals on social, request a demo today.