Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how SponsorHawk ("we", "us", or "our") collects, uses, shares, and protects personal information in connection with the SponsorHawk service (the "Service"), an AI sponsorship agent that researches your newsletter or podcast, finds companies that sponsor comparable shows, identifies the people who buy those sponsorships, drafts pitch emails, sends them on your behalf, and helps you handle the replies. It applies both to the people who use the Service (our "users") and to the business contacts our users pitch through it ("sponsor contacts"). It should be read alongside our Terms of Use.

Information We Collect From Users

• Account information. Your email address. The Service uses passwordless sign-in: we email you a single-use login link rather than storing a password, so we never hold user passwords at all.
• Show and targeting inputs. The newsletter URL or podcast name you enter, and anything you tell the Agent about your show: its audience size and composition, download or open rates, past sponsors, ad formats and rates, the categories of sponsor you want, and the ones you refuse.
• Pitch content. Pitch drafts and follow-up sequences, the sender name and sign-off you pitch under, media kit and booking links you supply, sponsor replies recorded against your campaigns, and the feedback you give the Agent about which sponsors were worth pitching.
• Billing information. Your payment status, credit balance, and usage ledger. Card details are handled entirely by Stripe. See Payments below.
• Usage and technical data. Records of the runs and campaigns you start, timestamps, and the IP address a run came from, which we use for rate limiting and abuse prevention. Our public pages load a lightweight analytics script that records page views.

Sponsor Contact Data and Where It Comes From

On your instruction, the Service processes business contact data about the people who buy media and sponsorships at companies: name, business email address, job title, employer, the URL of a public professional profile, and firmographic details such as industry, company size, and location. It also processes company-level records that are not personal data at all, such as which shows a company has sponsored and in what formats.

Our own datasets

Two datasets are maintained by us rather than queried live:

• A sponsorship-spend dataset of 12,011 companies covering 18,270 tracked sponsorships, with 11,964 named business contacts attached to those companies. This is what lets the Agent tell you that a company already pays to sponsor shows like yours, and who signs those deals.
• A newsletter sponsorship placements dataset of 100 placements across 60 newsletters, used as evidence of what a category of sponsor actually buys in this medium.

Both hold business contact data only: a person's professional identity at the company that employs them. Neither contains consumer data, home addresses, personal email accounts, or any special category of personal data under the GDPR. We also draw on publicly available sources such as company websites and show notes, and email addresses may be checked against third-party verification providers to confirm they are deliverable before anything is sent.

We do not build profiles of individuals for any purpose beyond the sponsorship outreach you direct.

Consistent with our Terms of Use, you are the data controller for the outreach you run: you decide which sponsors are contacted, on what legal basis, and with what pitch. We act as a processor and provider of tooling, and process sponsor contact data on your documented instructions. For the two datasets above, which we source and maintain independently of any one customer, we act as a controller and rely on legitimate interest in facilitating business-to-business communication between publishers and the companies that buy sponsorships; the rights described under Your Rights apply to that data.

How We Use Information

• To provide, operate, and improve the Service;
• To authenticate you and keep you signed in;
• To research your show, to identify candidate sponsors and the people who buy sponsorships at them, and to draft, send, and follow up on the pitches you instruct the Agent to run;
• To meter emails sent, bill you, and maintain your credit ledger;
• To prevent abuse, enforce rate limits, and secure the Service;
• To send you service and account emails, and, where you have consented, product emails you can unsubscribe from at any time;
• To comply with legal obligations.

Payments

Payments are processed by Stripe. Card details are entered directly into Stripe's own hosted fields and are transmitted to Stripe, not to us. We never receive or store full card numbers. What we store is a Stripe customer reference, whether a card is on file, and your usage and credit history. Saving a card is how we check that an account belongs to a real person, and it starts you with $10 in free credits; nothing is charged until those credits are spent. After that, emails are metered at $0.03 each and billed to your saved card after they are sent, in increments up to your account limit, and as described in the Terms of Use, saving a payment method authorizes us to charge it off-session for that usage.

AI Processing

The Service uses third-party AI model providers to research your show and candidate sponsors, summarise public information, judge which companies are a fit, draft pitch emails, and read and classify the replies that come back. Your show and campaign inputs, the sponsor contact records and public-website information the Agent gathers, and the text of sponsor replies you route through the Service are sent to those providers for processing so they can generate that output. We use providers under terms that prohibit training their general models on data submitted through their business APIs. Please do not enter sensitive personal data into the Agent's inputs.

How We Share Information

We do not sell user personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We share information only with service providers who process it on our behalf, and only as needed to run the Service:

• Cloud hosting and database providers that store the Service's data;
• Stripe, for payments;
• Email delivery providers, for login links, service notifications, and the pitches the Agent sends on your behalf;
• AI model providers, as described above;
• Data and email-verification providers used to find and validate business contact data.
• The sponsor contacts you pitch, who receive the sender name, reply address, show details, and any links you put in a pitch. That is the point of the Service, and you decide what goes in.

We may also disclose information where required by law, to enforce our terms, to protect our rights or the safety of others, or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, in which case we will take reasonable steps to ensure this policy continues to apply.

Information may be processed in the United States and other countries where we or our service providers operate. Where personal data is transferred out of the EEA or the UK, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.

Data Retention

We keep account, show, campaign, and billing records for as long as your account is active and afterwards for as long as we need them for legitimate business purposes, such as tax, accounting, dispute resolution, and legal compliance. Anonymous run records created before sign-up are short-lived and are cleared periodically. When you ask us to delete your account, we delete or anonymise your data, retaining only what the law requires us to keep.

Security

We protect information with measures including encryption in transit, cryptographically signed session cookies and single-use, time-limited login links, access controls on our systems, and delegation of card handling to Stripe. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Cookies and Session Data

We use cookies sparingly. The Service sets a signed session cookie that keeps you logged in and expires after 30 days; it is strictly necessary for the Service to function. We do not use advertising cookies or third-party tracking cookies for behavioural advertising. You can clear or block cookies in your browser, but you will not be able to stay signed in.

Your Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to our processing of your personal information, to request a portable copy of it, and to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent. To exercise any of these rights, email support@sponsorhawk.com. We will respond within the time required by applicable law, and we will not discriminate against you for making a request.

For individuals in the EEA and the UK, including sponsor contacts. If you have received a sponsorship pitch sent through the Service and want it to stop, or want your details removed from the datasets described above, email support@sponsorhawk.com and we will act on your request. You have the right to object at any time to processing based on legitimate interest, including the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications, and the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority (in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office). Where the pitch was sent by one of our users, that user is the controller for that campaign; we will forward your request to them and support them in honouring it, and we will suppress your address on our side so that no other user of the Service pitches it again.

Our users are responsible for honouring data subject requests arising from the campaigns they run, as set out in the Terms of Use.

Children's Privacy

The Service is a business tool and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, or under the minimum age required in their country. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact support@sponsorhawk.com and we will delete it.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated policy on this page and revise the "last updated" date above. Changes are effective when posted, and you are advised to review this page periodically.

Governing Law

This Privacy Policy is governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to its conflict of law provisions, except where mandatory local data protection law provides otherwise.

Contact Us

For any question about this policy or about your personal information, contact us at: