Commercial Lead, Business Management

Job Introduction

Commercial Lead – Magazine Publishing

Salary £60,000 to £70,000 depending on experience

Permanent

Hybrid London / Folkestone

Saga Magazine is looking to appoint a new Commercial Lead for 2026!

You’ll be joining the UK’s biggest subscription based monthly publication in the UK with an accolade of recent awards.

As the Commercial Lead, you will work closely with our renowned Editorial Director and Chief Data & Strategy Officer.

You’ll be a credible commercially minded individual, able to oversee business development and revenue generation of the full omnichannel magazine. Having an entrepreneurial approach where you can leverage our multi-award-winning magazine content to maximise our commercial performance across multiple revenue streams.

You will also be working with the Magazine Editorial team, key external agency partners and the Head of Finance as required, you will manage the full publishing revenue budget, which is comprised primarily of the magazine subscriptions, and advertising revenue, both internal and external.

For subscriptions you will have line management of the Marketing Audience Manager, while for external advertising, you will manage our agency relationship. Internally you will work closely with our business units (Travel, Insurance, Money and new business), to ensure we’re optimising our promotional activity for the business as a whole.

We work in a hybrid way at Saga both at home and in the office. This role requires you to be working from our London office a minimum of 2-3 times a week, allowing us to collaborate and share success as a business. On occasions, you may need to visit our Head Office in Folkestone, Kent.

Fully owning and managing the Publishing revenue streams, from our internal advertising of our Business Units, our External advertising across both Print and Digital formats, and our Subscription revenue of the Magazine.

Working as the Commercial Lead in the Publishing team you will be responsible for the following :

• To implement strategies to increase revenue from all our channels including Magazine (Print, Digital, Subscription, Newsstand etc.), Digital content such as Newsletters, Emails, Podcasts, Video content, social media etc.
• Aligning of our advertising copy to our Editorial content.
• Implement strategies to increase onward traffic from the magazine section of the website to the Business Units and lead the cross-department conversation about how value is assigned to this traffic.
• Work with the Editorial team to collate and present key insights and data for monthly Business Updates to the leadership team.
• Establishing sales targets for both advertising and subscriptions and driving the performance of both to ensure targets are met.
• Working with finance to produce the monthly forecast and annual budget for the Publishing revenue
• Help oversee and negotiate contracts as required with new clients.
• Work with the Digital and Data teams to ensure our website, and data insights are aligned to Publishing’s needs.
• Identify profit-making brand extension opportunities and take the lead in securing sponsor ships, networking with key external stakeholders and getting new projects off the ground.
• Reviewing and developing operational processes to improve the performance and maximise growth of the partnerships where appropriate.
• Working together with the other Saga Business units to promote the Saga brand.
• Managing risk assessments for any new initiatives.
• Staying aware of the latest trends and developments in the industry, ultimately being in tune with our customer and what other products and brands align to their needs and interests but do not step into our portfolio of products here at Saga

People management, relationships and account management responsibilities;

• Managing all daily commercial operations and partner with the existing editorial team.
• Line management of the Market Audience Manager, who is responsible for the delivery of our Magazine subscriptions performance.
• Collaborate with our outsourced advertising agency to maximise revenue from existing and new advertising clients.

Candidates applying will have gained experience in a…