Media Shower, an award-winning content marketing company and platform, helps finance, technology, and blockchain clients articulate what they do best and develops content to attract the right people and convert them to customers.
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As a content platform that manages both a constant stream of new contract creators and a growing client base, Media Shower was experiencing paperwork bottlenecks in both areas of its business.
On one side, despite verbal agreements, inking new business was a big sticking point for Media Shower. Its contracts were overly complicated and often required back-and-forths between lawyers over unnecessary details, which meant sales were stalling around the written agreement. “The whole process was convoluted and frustrating,” explains John Hargrave, CEO of Media Shower. “Sometimes it’s three or four months down the road before you actually get the deal done and signed. And for a small company, that’s a really significant problem, because you’re not getting paid.”
A similar paperwork problem was rearing its head when onboarding contractors, too. Juggling the Form W-9 and contractfor over 1,000 content creators was proving to be a logistical and operational nightmare for Media Shower, which wassending, storing, and managing everything manually. Not only did this mean a ton of time-consuming paperwork, but it also delayed the speed at which Media Shower could deliver content to its clients.
Something had to change. Media Shower needed a faster way to onboard its growing network of distributed content creators plus manage its contracts for new clients at scale.
“We were able to turn this process that was very cumbersome and very painful—and resulted in us losing a lot of business—into something that’s very smooth, very fast, and results in building a lot more business more quickly.”
With a clear vision of what needed to improve, Media Shower first set its sights on the client-signing process. So that no more deals would slip through the cracks, it started by simplifying its contract. “Instead of this 10-page contract, we went down to four pages, and then eventually we went down to two,” says John. “Today it’s basically a two-page agreement that just says, ‘Here’s who you are, here’s who we are, here’s what we’re producing,’ and this is it. The more we simplified, the less the client felt the need to send it to their legal team.”
With a new, simplified contract in hand, Media Shower turned to Dropbox Sign to streamline the process even further. Sending contracts digitally meant Media Shower could follow up on verbal agreements instantly. “Adding an eSignature service has done wonders in reducing the time between the verbal agreement and the signed agreement,” explains John.“And that, especially to a growing business, is profound. It’s a real transformation. I wish somebody had told me this at the beginning.”
Unexpectedly, sending contracts with Dropbox Sign has also helped Media Shower sniff out the real decision-makers in the buying process, which before had been shrouded in mystery and legal obfuscation. “You never knew who was reviewing it, who was going to sign it, or who had purchasing authority,” says John. “Now when we send contracts to clients, they’ll connect us with the parties who need to sign immediately. It’s a great mechanism for uncovering who actually has the purchasing power within the company.”
Turning to its other challenge—onboarding creators—Media Shower could have simply introduced the same digital process to patch many of its onboarding woes. Instead, it went a step further and built an entire platform, Media Shower Studio, to manage all of its contractors’ onboarding and work.
When it comes to onboarding, Media Shower Studio puts new content creators in an onboarding workflow that neatly presents all paperwork for signature, sends it to the relevant people, and automatically stores it after it’s been completed. Central to this smooth, automated onboarding experience is the embedded Dropbox Sign API, which allows content creators to sign directly on the platform, without downloading PDFs or switching windows.
John explains: “The Dropbox Sign API lets you then fill out all of the paperwork that then goes directly to our finance team to get the creators all set up. And then they get onboarded into our Media Shower Studio and start to receive assignments. So that let us scale up much more quickly, which was instrumental to our growth.”
To ensure a personal journey that accurately reflects the company, Media Shower employs custom branding as part of its onboarding workflow. This means retaining the functionality of Dropbox Sign while providing the complete branded experience that creators have come to expect.
Media Shower clients can now sign onboarding contracts in a flash, which helps the company keep pace and meet growth demands. John explains: “Radically simplifying the legalese and then adding an eSignature service has done wonders in reducing the time between the verbal agreement and the signed agreement. And that, especially to a growing business, is profound. It’s a real transformation.“
With a new onboarding system built on the Dropbox Sign API, Media Shower can quickly find the talent it needs and get them set up to create award-winning content in record time. “We went from 100 writers to 1,000 writers over the course of just a few months after we overhauled this whole process and made it really, really streamlined,” says John.
The Dropbox Sign API is embedded directly in the Media Shower platform, helping the company create a tightly integrated onboarding process that’s incredibly easy for in-house staff, prospective clients, and content creators.
Media Shower continues to use Dropbox Sign to power its onboarding process, making it quick and easy to hire the specialist talent it needs to create great content for clients. With easy on-platform signing and an automated onboarding workflow, Dropbox Sign has helped Media Shower transform its onboarding process and provide a great experience for everyone involved.
Dropbox Sign is the easiest way to send, receive, and manage legally binding eSignatures for business. Voted #1 for ease of use by G2, two years in a row, our eSignature solution can make your most important workflows fast, easier, and more secure. Sign up for a free trial today to start digitizing your business.
