Happy Tuesday!
I teased this one a few weeks ago in #68, and I'm finally ready to share the full story.
How did we get our earned linkbuilding turnaround time down from 50 days to 25 - while doubling published articles?
Sure, AI reduces cost. Everyone talks about that.
But the system Morgan and I invested 15 months into building also increased our delivery speed by 100%. Our clients get their links faster, with more volume, at the same quality bar.
Today's newsletter will cover the 3 main unlocks along this journey.
The Backstory
When we built our earned linkbuilding team in 2020, we never imagined we'd end up serving 500+ clients, earning (never buying!) 25,000+ branded and keyword-targeted backlinks.
Scaling responsibly so our clients get maximum benefit has required us to keep innovating on our own best practices.
In late 2024, Morgan and I started a project to reimagine one of our outreach teams. At the time, this team was publishing about 40 articles per month. We were happy with their performance. But, we knew 2025 was around the corner. And 2026 was coming soon after. There would be a different way to organize our work: AI, automation, and fantastic human talent excited by these opportunities to improve.
One pain point stuck out above all others: on average, this team waited 55 days between sending an outreach email and seeing a live article. That's almost two months.
What the Data Shows
We spent about nine months developing together, from mid-October 2024 through mid-2025. Since then, over the past nine months in production, the results speak for themselves.
Articles published per month: from 1 article in June 2025 (early ramp) to 85 in March 2026. That's more than double the original team's 40/month baseline.
Pitches sent per month: scaled from a few hundred to over 3,000 in March 2026. More at-bats means more wins for our clients.
Average turnaround time: dropped from a peak of 60+ days (July 2025, during early growing pains) to roughly 15 days in March 2026. The overall trajectory: from ~50 days down to ~25 on average, with the most recent month trending even lower.
More volume. Faster delivery. Same quality. Here's how:
1/ Segment Cold Outreach from Warm Outreach
I'll be honest, at first I felt guilty counting this one. Does it really count as an improvement if you just - separate the work? Yes. Emphatically yes.
Here's what we did: We now continuously conduct cold outreach that is not tied to any specific client deliverable. We build relationships with publishers on our own time, on our own dime. By the time a client order comes in, we already have warm relationships ready to go.
All client deliverable-related outreach now runs through these warmer channels.
This single change sped up client-facing turnaround time by roughly 50%. The "slow" part of outreach (waiting for a cold contact to respond) happens in the background, not on the client's clock.
2/ Restructure Editor Contracts for Speed
We studied our editors' timeliness and found a wide range. Some were fast. Some were - not.
We restructured contracts to award bonuses at 95% and 100% "on time fulfillment." The absolute minimum standard to stay on our team is now 90% on time.
Our people are humans, and delays do occur. But we wanted to re-raise the minimum bar to excellence.
This was a people-first decision, not a punitive one. We reward the behavior we want, and our editors have stepped up across the board.
3/ Implement a Follow-Up System
This one is the most overlooked lever in both sales and earned media outreach. A lot of times the outreach is one way, one time. Send it and forget it. In reality, what gets the link live is a follow-up.
We dug into our data and found something interesting. Some outreach specialists have a 12-day average lag between sending content and getting it published. Others? 19 days. That's 1.5x longer for doing the same work.
The difference? Follow-ups.
We know certain publishers can publish as fast as 5 to 7 days after receiving our content. But, some of our specialists weren't following up at day 5, 7, 10, or even after 14 days.
Our action item: Implement a notification system that fires after 7 days. The notification requires the specialist to send a follow-up, and document their action.
I get it. People naturally feel sheepish about following up. We're outreach specialists. We know you don't always want us in your inbox. But if you don't ask for what you want, you're not going to get it. If we want to keep cutting turnaround time for our clients, we have to do the uncomfortable thing: follow up.
The Big Picture
Everybody loves that AI saves money, and we're a business, so we appreciate that too.
But the goal of this project has always been to improve quality of service for our clients. Faster delivery. More output. A wider diversity of referring domains. Better content.
At the end of the day, that's what makes working with Jolly special.
I want to give a special shout out to the entire team, and in particular to Mira, who has worked closely with Morgan and especially myself week after week. Some of these improvements, I'm not gonna lie, took a month, two months, even three months of focus before we achieved another breakthrough. Without Mira's persistence, we wouldn't be sharing these numbers today.
Know a marketer or founder who'd benefit from what we're building? We pay commission when you send them our way - join the Jolly referral partner program.
What This Means for You
If you're running an in-house outreach or linkbuilding program, here's the TL;DR:
1/ Separate your cold prospecting from your deliverables pipeline. Do the slow work in the background. 2/ Reward speed in your team's contracts. Set a high floor, then bonus above it. 3/ Follow up. It feels uncomfortable. Do it anyway.
Want us to show you the full playbook? Book a Jolly Playbook consult and we'll walk you through the system so you can copy/paste it into your own operation.
Until next week, Greg
P.S. Want to earn commission by referring clients to Jolly? Join our referral partner program.