How Anthem Publishing turned limited resources into unlimited personalization

Anthem Publishing runs six core magazine brands. With titles like Vegan Food & Living, Women’s Running, Classic Pop, and Colouring Heaven, they’re all about helping people dive deeper into their passions. Each brand has its own editorial site, shop, newsletter, and community.

Anthem have a small team wearing a lot of hats. Digital Editors double as Client Managers. Marketing Managers handle everything from Black Friday campaigns to automations.

A disconnected web experience

The editorial websites had basic article recommendations built by developers, but they weren’t always serving the right content. Recipe lovers sometimes got news articles instead of more recipes.

With the business relying on banners for advertising as well as promoting relevant content, there wasn’t enough banner space to go around. There was no easy way to promote magazine subscriptions without showing the same offers to existing subscribers. Marketing and the Ad Sales team were getting frustrated.

Once on the site, the team were reliant on text links in articles to generate leads. Pop-ups and forms were separate, rather than embedded – with the extra step causing traffic to drop-off.

And with separate editorial and shop websites, connecting the two took manual work.

High-effort email builds

On top of managing the website, the team was building three email newsletters a week for Vegan Food & Living alone, plus weekly sends for other brands. Every article link in the emails was manually chosen, which was very time consuming.

The team needed a solution that could deliver more personalized experiences across web and email, across multiple brands, without scaling headcount.

The solution

Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance provided the perfect solution for both the marketing and editorial teams. Rachel Smith, Digital Editor on Vegan Food & Living, summed up the appeal: “We’re quite a small company with really limited resources. Anything that helps us boost our traffic without us having to do lots of extra work was really appealing.”

Tailored website experience that supports everyone’s objectives

Dedicated website banner slots with smart targeting rules were set up using Fresh Relevance. The targeting uses location, subscriber status and visit frequency to show a relevant message to each visitor.

New visitors now see a lead generation message encouraging them to sign up to the newsletter. Return visitors, or those already in the email list, see a subscription offer tailored to how new they are. Existing subscribers never see subscription offers.

The marketing team can tailor the right content at everyone. No more negotiating with Ad Sales. Best of all, results picked up. Brands that hadn’t converted from web banners in years started converting.

Content recommendations that keep visitors on site

Rachel replaced the old content recommendation system that appears on article pages with Fresh Relevance SmartBlocks. Rules like “last browsed” and “frequently browsed” surface more relevant article recommendations that encourage people to keep reading. Pages per visit have since jumped from 1.6 to 1.82 — a 14% increase.

This approach has also been used to keep sponsors happy. A bespoke recommendations block was built for an energy company who sponsor a category on the site. The block only shows on their articles, keeping readers engaged with their content and boosting reach without constant manual promotion.

Email conversions on autopilot

The power of Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance is being able to create a joined up, personalized experience across all marketing channels.

Like on the website, Rachel added automated SmartBlocks to the weekly newsletters, showing articles and recipes the recipient has previously browsed on the website. Clicks from these emails drive 500 extra visits to the website per send, at very low effort.

The health newsletter now has a fully automated section where Fresh Relevance picks the most relevant lead article from their catalog of thousands. It often surfaces older articles the team had forgotten about. The result: 1,000 extra clicks per newsletter – a 30% lift on previous performance.

And it’s not just about adding personalized content into existing emails to increase conversions. A new, fully automated monthly round-up has been introduced to engaged subscribers with personalized carousels from major site categories. It launched recently and is already generating 1,000 extra website visits per send.

The Shop team also now sends two monthly automated emails showing things like “recently browsed but not bought.”

Encouraging action using countdown timers

Both the editorial and shop teams use real-time countdown timers to drive urgency. Editorial uses them for advertiser deadlines, marketing drops them into Black Friday campaigns.

• 14% increase in pages per visit (1.6 to 1.82)
• 30% Increase in clicks from newsletters (1,000 additional clicks on baseline of 3,500)
• 5.7x ROI in the last year