Marketing Design for Dennis Publishing
Proud to have worked on marketing design briefs for Dennis Publishing magazines spanning several years, including the design and development of assets, emails, ads, and landing pages for titles like Cyclist, Auto Express, PC Pro and Evo.
CYCLING MAGAZINES - DIGITAL MARKETING
Dennis Publishing expanded their magazine portfolio by breaking into the world of road cycling, producing two titles in quick succession. Cyclist and BikesEtc launched to popular reception, owing to their high-impact visuals and quality kit reviews.
Marketing both magazines was high endurance; pushing an acquisition agenda with onboarding flows in the form of online advertisement, email blasts and conversion landing pages.
Launching a new title
The Cyclist magazine website debuted slightly ahead of the print title's brand and concept being finalised, so when the title did officially launch, its website had to be rapidly rebuilt to bring it in line with the publication's design. A better adoption of the style conventions was a key criteria, as was making much better use of the stunning feature photography that was now available.
Further, improving the site's performance in search was another key criteria; data analysis from the original website suggested visitors were aiming to find content that simply did not exist, resulting in a high bound rate. Meet The Team, Back Catalogue of Issues, and a page dedicated to the Cyclist magazine app formed part of my design brief.
I led the design, liaising with the editorial team and the subscriptions marketing team, who each reviewed my concepts from draft to final mock-up. I viewed the project as an opportunity to add more features and functionality to the site, to introduce device-responsiveness to the layouts, and to refine the content/UX pairing.
The magazine has seen incredible growth since launch and has amassed a highly devoted audience. Editorial reported an immediate uplift in conversion. The project was a triumph, garnering some of my best work for the client.
CYCLIST MAGAZINE WEBSITE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
The new Cyclist website benefits from a slick and disciplined aesthetic with full-bleed feature photography.
A strong subscription offering with a clear UI functions as the conversion point.
An interactive See Inside tool allows users to preview choice spreads from various issues to aid acquisition and further readership.
Animated screenshots on the App preview page seek to reflect the dynamism of the Cyclist app.
CYCLING MAGAZINES - AFFILIATE AND PPC MARKETING DESIGN
Every Dennis Publishing campaign entails a rigorous programme of pay-per-click and affiliate advertisement run through digital advertising networks. Typically this would comprise a bank of multi-frame assets of prescribed sizes, pushing subscriptions with welcome gifts and discounted issues.
Beyond that, social media sponsored content was employed for the same purpose.
Producing banner ads is fairly labour intensive. There's a science to getting all the content to fit, within multiple dimensions, and with a cap on file-size. Working on hundreds of these assets took determination.
CYCLIST MAGAZINE - CAMPAIGN LANDING PAGES
Every successful advertisement, be it digital or print, would steward users to bespoke campaign landing pages - instrumental to the conversion journey.
Some of the pages I built offered sample content or dedicated supplements that could be accessed or unlocked in exchange for registering to mailing lists.
The Big Rides was one such supplement. For Cyclist magazine we'd compiled the content from the feature of the same name from several issues and made it available as a free sample download for potential subscribers.
A common onboarding strategy was to gather more user data in exchange for an entire free issue. Time and again I'd code and test the data capture forms and situate them into my campaign artworked landing pages.
BikesEtc employed similar initiatives for acquisition. I designed and built landing pages like this, pushing the brand and pushing special offers.
The combination of discounted issues and free gifts is common with Dennis Publishing's subscription model, along with other benefits such as collectors edition covers and early delivery.
Interactive tools that allow users to browse issues of BikesEtc and Cyclist magazines were common in the landing pages I built - an effective means to depict an analogue product in a digital space.
CYCLING MAGAZINES - EMAIL MARKETING
As with all Dennis Publishing's marketing campaigns email communications illustrating subscription offers and savings is core to the strategy.
To boost incentive, marketing emails containing offers would often include a live countdown component - a dynamically populated animation constructed on the fly from a remote script.
Like Cyclist magazine, most titles in the portfolio were released as physical and digital versions, so subscription offers are either broken down or bundled for users to tailor their commitment.
Offering free issues to potential subscribers was mutually beneficial. Claimants got a freebie in exchange for some salient details Dennis Publishing would use for future, more targeted marketing.
Seasonal offers are commonplace, with different titles appointed for their relevance. BikesEtc and Cyclist magazines paired up for a 80's themed Father's Day campaign one year.
Calendar staples for the cycling community are also celebrated by both BikesEtc and Cyclist magazines. The Tour de France provides a huge content opportunity and a lot of subscription potential to tap into.
Andi takes great pride in his work, has a knack for nailing a design on the first attempt, and has a keen eye for detail.
Jon WarnesOnline Design Manager
Dennis Publishing
MOTORING MAGAZINES - DIGITAL MARKETING
Dennis Publishing's portfolio of motoring magazines is impressive. A stable of five titles demands a high turnover of digital campaigning. From emails to banner ads to landing pages, I've been designing and coding the funnels to help the team achieve their subscription goals.
MOTORING MAGAZINES - CAMPAIGN LANDING PAGES
Exclusive supplement content becomes available for download to those who engage with data capture and newsletter registration.
Equally, free copy incentives are a big draw in securing richer retargeting data. I designed and coded the form UI and landing pages for tens of these.
Sometimes these funnels used content sampling as a hook; substrata pages of the publication features built into landing pages for potential subscribers to explore without pressure.
Coupled with special offers of gifts and discounts for signing up, these pages connected with their in-print counterparts and stewarded analogue readers toward becoming digital subscribers.
Dennis Publishing's titles are available digitally through their various apps. Promoting the digital editions was a significant focus in selling subscriptions and many landing pages had interactive components built to showcase the app features.
For seasonal and event campaigns all inbound marketing led to landing pages. From here users would be tracked and stewarded, ensuring deals and discounts are applied as necessary.
MOTORING MAGAZINES - AFFILIATE AND PPC MARKETING DESIGN
Trafficking users to Dennis Publishing's subscription landing pages was largely achieved through online advertisement. Copious banner designs exist in them wild - many sizes and formats across ad networks and social media.
MOTORING MAGAZINES - EMAIL MARKETING
Email marketing for Dennis Publishing's motoring titles - like classic car mag Octane - are routinely designed and coded.
Re-marketing emails sent to lapsed subscribers followed a similar template. I'd design these to highlight discounted or free issues alongside free gifts.
All the major calendar sales events were tapped into by Dennis Publishing, and each were rigorously promoted across all channels including email.
Vantage magazine is the most recent motoring title developed by the publishers. Email comms formed a significant part of its launch campaigning.
Amongst the acquisition email comms I built, Evo magazine and Octane magazine were often closely cross-promoted owing to their audience overlap.
The digital editions of Dennis Publishing's motoring magazines were promoted often, encouraging readers to bolster their subscriptions with device-friendly, interactive content.
I designed and developed many functional and stewardship email communications. Keeping subscribers informed about their account activity and movements along the onboarding journey built trust and earned retention.
Free issue offers were core to every Dennis Publishing subscription drive. It was a common theme in email marketing year-round.
SUBSCRIPTION BUREAU - BRAND REDESIGN
Rebranding the subscription service
Dennis Publishing provided a platform for its readers to login and manage their magazine subscriptions called subsinfo.co.uk. The branding of the service, right down to its name, needed an overhaul.
1. The Subscriptions Marketing team commissioned me to develop ManageMyMags.
2. The logo's emblem had my attention initially. I was keen to include a motif resembling the physical magazines; an iconic depiction of the printed spines or covers or pages merged into the letterforms of the logo text.
3. I also quite liked this series where I explored distilling that magazine depiction down to a simple sequence of rectangles. The title was also briefly adjusted to My Magazines, resulting in these especially strong concepts.
4. Preferring earlier exploration the client returned to ManageMyMags and elected a simpler magazine motif from my earlier process. The final logo was crafted rapidly and rolled out to print collateral and the management website immediately.
TECH MAGAZINES - DIGITAL MARKETING
Titles like PC Pro, Custom PC, Micromart and Digital SLR Photography formed Dennis Publishing's tech magazine offering. Comprehensive hardware and software testing, product reviews and comparisons and how-to guides are unmatched across the series.
The strategy to market subscriptions to these titles followed the same tried and tested blueprint as others in the portfolio.
TECH MAGAZINES - AFFILIATE AND PPC MARKETING DESIGN
During my time designing for Dennis Publishing I produced copious banners for special offers and sales for their tech titles, submitted to third party ad networks for wider distribution.
Milestone issues, seasonal sales and competitions would all warrant a blast.
Attractive social media posting would also contribute to the complete acquisition strategy.
DIGITAL SLR MAGAZINE WEBSITE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
The Subscriptions Marketing team at Dennis Publishing tasked me with designing and building the Digital SLR Photography magazine website to appropriately acquire and steward new subscribers.
Focus was heavily on the variety of subscription plans and bundles available, presented immediately on the homepage.
High impact visuals filled Digital SLR Photography magazine, so finding spreads to populate the See Inside interactive gallery was not complicated. The gallery tool is instrumental in converting curious browsers into subscribed readers.
The gateway to conversion was the effective pricing and benefits matrix I designed to compare each of the Digital SLR Photography magazine plans in a digestible way.
A separate conversion flow was devised for purchasing gift subscriptions. Gifting a subscription of Digital SLR Photography magazine to someone else entailed population to a different database, and so a unique user journey needed coding to the site.
TECH MAGAZINES - CAMPAIGN LANDING PAGES
Maximising audience potential with targeted communications and user journeys was something Dennish Publishing was deft at. For instance, I was tasked with designing and building a landing page promoting introductory offers to for Digital SLR Photography magazine's potential American readership.
'Drop a hint' was a mechanic I introduced to Computeractive's Gift Subscription webpage originally. It was later adopted into the websites of many titles across Dennis Publishing's portfolio, as well as various acquisition campaigns affiliated with seasonal gifting.
On very rare occasions I would design communications leveraging content suitable for cross-promotion. Certain articles, features or issues would highlight intersections of Dennis Publishing's readerships, providing legitimate and creative opportunities to market to more than one segment of the database at a time.
Competitions were also a rarity. Developing a tastefully presented landing page for Digital SLR Photography magazine was one of the few I worked on.
Micro Mart was one of the smaller titles in Dennis Publishing's portfolio and its online grounding was nothing more than a simple landing page I designed and coded. The page had the straightforward agenda of commencing the onboarding journey to subscription for already incentivised readers.
TECH MAGAZINES - EMAIL MARKETING
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (and many of the straddling weeks) are critical staples in the tech portfolio sales calendar. Rapid-fire campaigns offering incentives across the portfolio required email-to-landing-page journeys designed and built with haste.
Snap-marketing was an excellent challenge to solve. Capitalising on a fast-moving situation (such as a forecast of heavy snowfall) by developing a meaningful message and pairing it with a topical gift incentive (such as touch-screen gloves) always elevated subscription levels in an unforeseen way.
A/B testing was trialled occasionally for various Dennis Publishing titles, both with landing page and email communication designs. Striving to balance the correct mix of variables to secure maximum conversion was always a worthwhile pursuit.
Standard offers would surface year-round. For PC Pro magazine, this meant coding emails promoting free issue distribution as samples for those who wanted to trial the magazine before subscribing.
The launch of Computeractive magazine was marketed through all available touchpoints, including email communication. Supporting the brand, I designed and coded a template that welcomed potential readers to the new title and its content.
Finding the correct balance of savings, social proof, gift item, message hierarchy and overall design of the email communications sent took years of granular A/B testing.
FITNESS MAGAZINES - DIGITAL MARKETING
Men's Fitness and Women's Fitness were sibling titles long held by Dennis Publishing. Each curated content about nutrition and diet, workout routines, exercise and gym equipment and more. Much like the other titles from the stable, this duo were marketed online in a variety of landing pages, email communications, and digital advertisements.
FITNESS MAGAZINES - CAMPAIGN LANDING PAGES
Incentives to register new subscribers to Women's Fitness magazine included huge offers like discounting a first year's subscription to just £1. I designed and coded landing pages to facilitate readers arriving from other sources to onboard them via these offers.
Data-capture events - such as interstitial modals - were introduced to the Women's Fitness content website to encourage newsletter registration, granting access to further digital content and exclusive subscription offers. Building these modals to interface with the mailing list database was a clean piece of work.
The launch of the Men's Fitness magazine iPad app was celebrated with a dedicated landing page promoting its benefits. Interactive content with video, bookmarking and other digital features made the magazine's content more appealing than the print edition, though bundling the two would afford the reader more value and a higher discount.
Since Men's Fitness and Women's Fitness were sibling titles their campaigning was often similar. The Men's Fitness content website also carried an interstitial modal encouraging newsletter registration.
FITNESS MAGAZINES - AFFILIATE AND PPC MARKETING DESIGN
The far-reach of distributed online ad networks and the prominence of social media sponsorship meant that promoting both Men's Fitness and Women's Fitness subscription offers via these channels resulted in the design and development of many different visual assets. There were often animated, occasionally interactive, and would be the primary initiation point for users to embark on subscription funnels.
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