20
BEST PRACTICE
Paid subscription conversion
through digital transformation
AT A GLANCE
PAID SUBSCRIPTION MARKETING OF THE FINANCIAL TIMES
Various publishers, such as the
New York Times, Wall Street
Journal or Financial Times, are
specifically setting store by paywall
models to monetise their
journalistic content.
REGISTRATION
REGISTRATION (e-mail address)
for 3 FREE ARTICLES a month
MARKETING – FT PAID SUBSCRIPTION
• Targeted, staggered, but always individualised
measures/offerings until a user takes out a paid subscription.
• They include:
Generating, analysing and profiling
user data is vital as part of that,
especially in marketing the
offerings.
IDENTIFIED USER TRACKING
Personal
WELCOME
Targeted PUSH
MESSAGES from
the user’s sphere of
interest
Automated “TOP
PLACEMENT”
of articles with a
high interest match
After readers have completed the
obligatory (free) registration
process, the Financial Times tracks
their every action (currently
>500,000 digital subscribers) with
the aim of selectively feeding their
marketing process for the paid
subscriptions with user data and
making the offerings as
personalised as possible.
FT TRACKS USERS’ BEHAVIOUR
• How often do they come?
At what time?
• In what sections
do they browse (without clicking
on an article)?
• What articles do they read
(for how long)?
• What do they pass on to peers?
� Deduction of user preferences
Personalised POP-
UPs with offers to
attract subscription
Individualised
E-MAIL
NEWSLETTER
Targeted ARTICLE
RECOMMENDA-
TIONS based on
collaborative
filtering
Continuous OPTIMISATION OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS
and re-targeting of the user on external websites