Employee Interview: Jessica Tomkins, Publisher Development Manager

In this new series, Skimlinks employees talk about their roles and day-to-day experiences in the company.

This time we feature Jessica Tomkins who works as a Publisher Development Manager for the UK & EMEA.

I Studied Spanish and Portuguese at University. I actually started to play rugby in Spain which was a bit rogue, but it was a great way to meet people, especially locals, as otherwise you’re in an Erasmus community. 

Were friends to describe me, I think they would say I’m cheerful and confident. I think colleagues would say the same. I’m told I don’t ever get stressed, even when everything is stressful. I’ll always give things a go. 

I’m a Publisher Development Manager in the UK. I work with around half of our UK cohort, particularly our publishers who are managed but need help to scale. Day-to-day I talk to publishers with the goal of helping them increase their commerce revenue. They might not have much of a commerce strategy yet, so I’ll help them build that, find out what their plans are and help them to grow at an incremental level. 

I joined Skimlinks about three days before graduation. When I was looking for a job I remember I said two things to my friends: I don’t know what I’ll do and whatever I do end up doing will be something I don’t know exists yet. I had always been interested in publishing, which led me to Skimlinks and the Publisher Development Intern role. It looked really good: Skimlinks worked with the big names and I could see that the skillset I would acquire would be really excellent. The company was also founded by a woman which is quite rare and through interviews I gained a really favourable impression of the team. It seemed like a fun place to work, but also a company that was going places. 

I started in July 2018 and actually began on the Merchant side. That proved really helpful, as I got a lot experience in reporting and a lot of ownership early in my time here. A few months in an opportunity came up on the publisher side, I moved across there and that suited me really well. I started out supporting my manager on his accounts, learned from him and then in August 2019 received my own portfolio of accounts that I now manage. 

We’re the face of Skimlinks. Account Managers are the link that clients have to the company and the platform. On the publisher side, we communicate about any new technologies or products we’ve introduced and they give us feedback that we can provide to the business on what we’re working on. 

One of our main challenges is educating publishers on our industry and how our technology can help them. Sometimes they don’t understand affiliate or have technical questions. Publishers also work in different niches, so you’ve got to take them as individual cases, and find individual answers. So I quite often will liaise with our technical teams, call publishers to understand their problems, and through exposure to those technical conversations learn so the next time I can answer a publisher’s questions directly. 

A highlight for me has been getting my own accounts to manage. It is really exciting to work with them on their long-term strategy, drive the growth of accounts, put in the effort and see your clients start to have results. 

One of our company values is “move the needle” which resonates with me a lot. For my team it means what can we do to grow our clients revenue and as a result grow the company’s revenue. You have ownership of these accounts, you help them start to grow and you get a sense of purpose once you see the numbers start moving. It isn’t always possible, but when you can put a direct link between something you’ve done and a client’s success that feels amazing. 

Working here has really taught me how to forge relationships. It is really important to know your colleagues on a personal level, because it helps make everything at work go much more smoothly. I don’t think before I’d started working I’d realised how important that was. We also had some really excellent sales training, where we were taught to treat someone how they would want to be treated. I found that really profound and really put it into practice. 

We’re also fortunate enough to have an individual learning budget. I’ve used mine to buy books and courses, but the best thing was probably a public speaking event that I went to with a colleague called, “How To Own The Room”. It is tailored for women and teaches them about public speaking. I loved it and have gone to lots of events since, that are both business related and more personal development inclined. 

To anyone thinking about applying for Skimlinks I say do it. You’ll grow skills you might not know you wanted to grow, work with a talented group of people that are all experts in their field, and have fun at the same time! 

Skimlinks is hiring now across all teams.