Case Study

Dennis Publishing

Leading UK media company boosts customer engagement & drives subscriptions with automated, personalized lifecycle email campaign

Website
dennis.co.uk
Partner Agency
Industry
Media, Entertainment & Publishing
Geography
United Kingdom

Dennis is one of the leading content providers in the UK. Founded in 1974 and based in London, Dennis has transformed from its traditional publishing roots to a true multi-platform media company. As the sixth-largest consumer magazine publisher, Dennis has a portfolio of over 30 media brands, including flagship brand The Week.

The award-winning company operates in four sectors: Current Affairs, Technology, Automotive, and Specialist, reaching over 50 million unique users and selling over 2.5 million magazines every month.

The Challenge

Dennis was facing a huge increase in revenue targets for subscription marketing. Since email has been a proven revenue driver for the brand, Dennis focused on this tried-and-true channel as a key strategy.

To meet their high goals, Dennis’ marketing team needed to:

Define target segments, both online and offline
Identify behavioral triggers they could use to optimize campaigns
Create automated, customerf irst journeys to increase user engagement across emails
Carefully curate and design relevant, customized content in a timely manner using templates
Ensure automated journeys were always active to take advantage of new captured data and promotional offers
Ensure data was GDPR compliant with clear opt-in preferences and user interests

This project has transformed the way the entire subscriptions marketing department uses email, data capture, and content curation as a whole, and provided building blocks for future campaigns across all brands.

Holly Williams

Marketing Automation Manager, Dennis Publishing

The Path To Success:
Personalized and automated lifecycle emails

Working with Selligent, Dennis was able to easily create, manage, and deliver a multi-stream email campaign focused on targeting, segmenting, and automating. Critical components included:

Testing for success: The marketing team revolutionized its email testing methods, using online and offline techniques to gather data and user information.

Capturing data to enhance journeys: New data capture points were identified in newsletter sign-ups and lead generation forms, and entered in an automated lifecycle program.

Delivering relevant content: Dennis tested promotional content offline and converted the most successful into relevant, email-friendly content.

Monitoring & adjusting for proper cadence & messaging: In addition to using clever segmentation, A/B testing, personalization, and data capture, the marketing team looked at recency and frequency rules to make sure cadence rules were followed.

Results

In their own words, Dennis “blew our subscriptions target out of the water” with this campaign. It proved to be one of the company’s most successful email subscription campaigns, driving exceptional revenue and engagement, with messaging that was fully GDPR compliant.

“The results have drastically improved engagement and conversion rates, while increasing brand loyalty and providing a fine-tuned customer experience,” said Holly Williams, Marketing Automation Manager for Dennis. “With Selligent providing the benefit of a single customer view, we’ve enhanced our ability to understand our customers across different data collection points, user journey, and lifecycle stages. Customers are now treated as individuals, not broad demographics.”

+614 %
year-over-year increase on subscriptions from email targeting
+6 %
click-through rates

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