Dennis Publishing – How a publisher drove a 4x increase in affiliate revenue

About Dennis Publishing
Dennis is one of the most dynamic media companies in the UK. As the 6th largest consumer magazine publisher, Dennis has transformed its business from its traditional print publishing roots to a true multi-platform, award-winning media company, with a group turnover of over £115m. The company’s portfolio of over 30 brands, operates in four areas of excellence: Current Affairs, Technology, Automotive and Lifestyle, reaching over 50million unique users and selling over 2.5million magazines every month. Dennis Publishing brands include The Week, Auto Express, Carbuyer.co.uk, Alphr.com, evo, Cyclist, Viz, Coach, Buyacar.co.uk and expertreviews.co.uk.

Dennis is run for the benefit of the Heart of England Forest Charity. For more information go to www.heartofenglandforest.com

We are focused on diversifying our revenue streams. E-commerce has rapidly proved how lucrative it can be and will be an integral part of the future of our brand. We have scaled our e-commerce operations across the brands incredibly rapidly, so much so that we have hired a dedicated Commerce Editor to further optimize our approach to affiliate marketing

_Jenny Clements, Head of Partnerships & Affiliates @ Dennis Publishing.

Key achievements

• Improved revenue per click by focusing on content around technology
• 4x increase in affiliate revenues 2015-2016
• 5x increase in the volume of transactions generated/li>
• Full ecommerce strategy agreed at C-level with resources to hire a dedicated E-commerce Editor

Three keys to Dennis’ success

• Keep mindful of editorial integrity
  Editors across Dennis’s Tech portfolio, which includes market leading brands such as www.expertreviews.co.uk and alphr.com, understand they have a key role to play in delivering “service journalism”: Readers trust Dennis across this portfolio to create and curate content about relevant products and brands that helps them when researching a purchase. To ensure that trust is protected, affiliate links are only ever implemented with the user in mind, and the team work to ensure their premium review content is useful and focused on connecting readers to the best deals and retailers.
• Central organisation
  Dennis has coordinated content monetization efforts centrally. A Head of Partnerships and Affiliates ensures best practices on creating and promoting commerce-related content are communicated consistently to the editorial team, and also works closely with audience development teams to produce a data driven approach to creation of commerce content.
• A data-driven approach
  Across the portfolio of brands, teams are supplied with content strategy around e-commerce results so they understand how best to use this data to inspire content creation. With insights they are also able to better understand their users and how to use commerce-related content to attract new readers.

The “catch all nature” of the product and easy implementation allows us to quickly scale our conversions and act
on the size of the affiliate opportunity across all the different types of content in our wide portfolio. Layered on top of a great product was the expertise and support given by the Skimlinks publisher team who helped us identify the best growth areas and how to shape our strategy to quickly develop this new revenue stream.

_Jenny Clements, Head of Partnerships & Affiliates @ Dennis Publishing.

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