Ecommerce Sales Manager

About us

The Independent is an online news publisher that was established in 1986 as a national newspaper independent of party political affiliations or proprietorial influence. In 2016, The Independent became a fully digital publisher, moving away from print in pursuit of sustainability, and to safeguard its values and journalism for the future.

The Independent has always thrived through innovation and change. It was the first British newspaper to add a Saturday magazine; the first to give photography the same prestige as a news copy; the first to challenge the Westminster lobby system of closed briefings; the first broadsheet to move to the more compact ‘tabloid’ format; the first to launch a concise quality compact paper; and the first – and only – major newspaper to pull off a successful transformation to fully digital publishing.

Through The Independent, Independent TV, eCommerce, indy100, subscriptions and other ‘reader revenues’, The Independent plans to continue the work of many decades, bringing much-needed independent journalism to over 100 million unique global visitors a month, make its voice ever louder and more insistent the world over.

We have an international editorial team with our main offices in London and New York.

The role and the team

The Ecommerce Sales Manager will be responsible for growing B2B and B2C digital revenues. The role will focus on improving revenues by securing and implementing new affiliate and ecommerce commercial deals and by managing and optimising existing partnerships across our websites. The Ecommerce Sales Manager will work in a team of sales people reporting into the Head of Retail Media, and alongside affiliate marketing and ecommerce experts. They will be crucial to the success of our solutions and partnerships operations.

The Ecommerce team is one of the fastest-growing teams in our company and is composed of Editorial, Audience and Commercial divisions. The latter, where this role sits, is made up of commercial specialists tasked with growing performance revenue through affiliates and ecommerce partnerships on The Independent, The Standard, BuzzFeed and HuffPost. These range anywhere from marketing financial products to generating holiday bookings or sales from our product recommendations platforms, IndyBest and ESBest. Our goal is to grow our ecommerce business by improving and optimising the current strategy, diversifying revenue, and securing successful long term ecommerce partnerships.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

• We champion diversity in our teams and in our reporting. As a growing and global brand, we must have a workforce that’s more representative of our readers, viewers, clients and partners, and a workplace that creates a sense of belonging for everyone
• We are committed to hiring and developing a diverse workforce regardless of background, and we support our people to thrive in their careers here.

The Independent is an equal opportunities employer, if you require any reasonable adjustments to complete your application, please do not hesitate to advise us accordingly.

About you

Key responsibilities and accountabilities

• Work with the rest of the team to achieve and exceed weekly and monthly ecommerce revenue targets.
• Drive awareness of the titles’ proposition and contribute to the growth of our commerce content solution business through tenancy and performance-based deals with affiliate networks, agencies, and brands.
• Persuade clients to allocate budgets to our titles with strong communication and negotiating skills.
• Maintain a good profile within the major affiliate networks and agencies, organise presentations throughout the year and collaborate with all partners to identify revenue growth opportunities.
• Work alongside the delivery team to present clients with bespoke responses to briefs that deliver results.
• Liaise with other departments to ensure all sold campaigns are correctly set up and executed and monitor performance to ensure deliverables are met.
• Manage and optimise existing partner relationships whilst identifying new opportunities and secure new profitable ecommerce partnerships.
• Actively support the wider ecommerce team during key shopping moments such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday & Prime Day.
• Negotiate affiliate commission increases (CPAi) with our top partners.
• Closely monitor our articles to ensure out of stock, broken links and 404 errors are kept to a minimum, and content is optimised for revenue and traffic.
• Collate revenue figures for internal reporting and invoicing as appropriate and help maintain billing for the entire ecommerce area.

Essential skills and experience

• Previous experience in advertising sales, including branded content and display solutions.
• Experience managing and growing accounts.
• Track record of meeting and exceeding sales targets.
• Strong communication and negotiation skills.
• Strong presentation skills.
• Good understanding of affiliate marketing in the digital media industry.
• Highly organised with the ability to effectively prioritise a varied workload and deadlines.

Desirable

• Previous experience in digital marketing, preferably within the affiliate, and/or ecommerce space.
• Previous experience working in media – publisher, agency, or affiliate network side.
• Experience in driving revenue through optimisation and achieving CPA increases where possible.
• Knowledge and understanding of attribution and tracking solutions.
• Understanding of technical requirements within the digital media space.

Our values – you will deliver across all our values

Inclusive: We champion diversity in our teams and in our reporting. Working as a team, we put transparency and effective communication at the heart of everything we do.

Innovative: From the very beginning, The Independent has been breaking the mould. We take risks and are always looking to try new ideas in pursuit of excellence.

Independent: Nobody tells us what to think; we make up our own minds and aren’t afraid to do things differently. Like our readers, we value honesty and integrity above outside influences.

To apply, please send an up-to-date CV along with a covering letter and salary expectations.

Due to the high volume of applications, we will only be contacting candidates who have been shortlisted and progressed through to the next stage.