What made you want to work in publishing?

I’ve always loved magazines and reading. My experience lay in the music industry, and the film and TV industry before that, so publishing was a great next step within the entertainment and content industry.

But more than that, I love working for companies that are applying technology to improve consumer propositions and the fact that Readly had developed an all-you-can-read digital service for magazines, like Spotify had for music, was the clincher for me. Teaming tech with entertainment was the perfect fit.

Chart your career from the start to where you are now…

I started my career off in the music industry licensing music into film, TV and adverts. I then got into commercial partnerships between brands and music at both peoplesound.com and Warner Music, before switching industries and joining LOVEFiLM and then Amazon Video, where I headed up partnerships. After stints at Yubl, a social media/messaging app, and Easyfundraising, an affiliate shopping platform, I joined Readly.

As Global Partnerships Director at Readly, what is your strategy when it comes to choosing and developing partnerships?

We look for partners that want long-term, always-on partnerships that provide significant reach, but who can also market the Readly service to their customers across many touchpoints. We ideally want to be one of a few partners the brand collaborates with, rather than hundreds, and it should be a good brand fit. For example holidays and reading go hand in hand so partnerships with airlines and holiday operators work well. People love reading about fashion and seeking out recipes so likewise fashion and retail collaborations are also a good fit.

A lot of success can depend on the partner's team too – if they have KPIs to deliver success to partnerships that often makes a huge difference on how the partnership develops over time.

How do partnerships help drive subscribers?

Partnerships help us reach customers we might not find via other marketing channels. They also tend to be more cost efficient than other channels as we pay the partner on performance, either via a revenue share or CPA, if there is payment involved. We give the partner an extended free trial of Readly for their customers and then help the partner market the Readly service in the best possible way, which drives their customers to take up the trial and hopefully become paying subscribers.

What values do you keep in mind when choosing partnerships?

We’ve welcomed 26 new brands to the Readly partnership programme in the last quarter alone – that’s in addition to the 100+ who joined last year. We look to work with similar minded progressive companies who share the same values or audience.

What excites me most is the diversity of our partners. Pretty much every consumer-facing sector is represented, from large companies like McDonald’s to FMCG brands including Diet Coke and more recently we’re moving into travel, health, fashion and finance.

At first glance, it might look as though these companies are wildly different but what they have in common is a passion for the customer experience and a commitment to enhancing that experience through innovative partnerships.

How important is sustainability when your considering which companies to partner with?

Sustainability is becoming more and more important to companies and it’s certainly on our radar as we consider partners, especially as Readly helps consumers reduce their carbon footprint. We won’t work with brands such as tobacco, alcohol or anything too risque!

Having a strong sustainability offering isn't the number one consideration for us as our main goal is subscriber acquisition but it is certainly an important consideration.

What’s on your radar? (something industry related that is keeping you awake at night)

The industry is moving towards digital, which has been accelerated by COVID – there's now no physical copies of magazines or newspapers in aircrafts or in waiting rooms anymore – so finding ways we can better partner with companies and offer Readly access, such as airlines, coffee shops or hairdresser chains, is something we're currently engaged with.

What magazine would you stockpile?

When I was younger it was always Mixmag _as I used to DJ (more hobby than professional!), so enjoyed all the music reviews but now it is more likely to be a tech mag like _T3 _or car mag like _Top Gear.

Find out more about Readly here.