The Mail & Guardian is looking for a Product Manager to join our editorial team and form part of the key growth area in the business.
Job Description
This person is responsible for growing and managing the M&G’s subscriptions business and establishing our community of readers.
Reporting to: Editor-in-chief
Contract Type: Fixed-Term
Responsible for: Managing the reader subscription funnel from attracting new readers to getting them to subscribe and to build an engaged participatory community among subscribers. You will be working to develop, implement and manage a subscriptions sales plan for the company’s publications to gain maximum exposure and increase subscriptions.
This is a hands-on job, and would suit a personable and entrepreneurial sales manager with experience in the digital conversion process. The person should have impeccable communication and organisational skills to balance multiple tasks, pay attention to detail and be a champion for the readers. The role requires someone who believes in the contribution potential of readers, and sees the value in involving and engaging with them to enable the M&G to provide a robust subscriber offering.
Key Performance Areas:
- This position is intrinsically cross-functional working closely with the online editor, audience engagement editor, editorial, subscription team and commercial team to set the strategy, and deliver multi-channel offline and online media campaigns that increase volume and generate revenue
- Monitor data points to build and execute strategy to acquire and retain subscribers across the various Mail & Guardian platforms
- Research business development and other growth opportunities and create a business case to motivate for prioritising certain projects
- Develop relevant partnership initiatives with associations, trade events etc. globally
- Coordinate between the director of sales and sales agents, managing targets and ensuring these are reached
- Analyse results from campaigns to refine strategy and ROI
- Initiate “test and learn” strategies to improve effectiveness of marketing assets
- Work closely with sales, editorial colleagues to drive subscription growth
- Develop a close relationship with paid subscribers in order to learn more about their reasons for being part of the Mail & Guardian as well as how we can better serve their information needs.
Competences & Knowledge
- Proven track record of managing successful subscription-led campaigns.
- Solid understanding of digital marketing channels and strategies across paid, social, SEO and newsletters.
- Strong project management experience and the ability to analyse campaigns.
- Excellent communication and copywriting skills.
- Proactive with a keen eye for detail.
- A minimum 5 years of subscription and marketing experience.
- Fully proficient in Google workplace tools.
- Functional understanding of WordPress, Mailchimp and other social media publishing tools.
Experience
The successful candidate for this role will have previous experience preferably within the E-commerce environment and News Media with experience working on subscription products. You will be proactive with excellent communication and organisational skills with the ability to manage a varied workload and team.
Approach
Able to plan and present goal driven strategies in line with the M&G’s repositioning. Should be able to work harmoniously with all staff. Should be able to execute and review on-site experiments in visual design and publishing techniques for ongoing KPI improvements
Qualifications
Degree level education or experience amounting to equivalent.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
The specific values of these KPIs are subject to change and will be agreed with the Editor-in-Chief:
- Increase readers
- Increase registration to newsletter
- Increase conversions to subscribers
- Build a knowledge base of subscriber needs and wants through a dedicated engagement and research strategy
Closing date: 18 March 2022
Application Process
Candidates should send a current curriculum vitae and a covering letter that sets out their personal vision for the future of the Mail & Guardian’s digital output.
Nominations and personal applications from suitably qualified and experienced candidates are invited to submit their applications by email attachment to [email protected].
The interview process will require the candidate to provide examples of projects undertaken, goals envisioned and achieved.
Overview of M&G Media Limited
M&G Media is a leading independent publishing company whose principal business is the dissemination of news, current affairs information, opinion pieces as well as all forms of advertising by way of print, online and other innovative media platforms.
The publication began as an alternative newspaper by a collection of journalists in 1985, after the closure of two leading liberal newspapers, The Rand Daily Mail and the Sunday Express. It was originally known as the Weekly Mail as the paper was not in a position to publish daily. With minimal initial capital on hand at the onset of the paper, it was funded by liberal professionals, academics and business leaders who contributed what they could to garner support for a fresh and independent publication in South Africa.
Over the next 30 years, the publication nurtured its reputation and consistently gained traction in the market, thereby establishing international credibility and winning numerous awards both locally and internationally.