FT launching premium newsletter on Monday

The Financial Times is launching a new newsletter for premium subscribers on Monday called Authers’ Note, reports Lucia Moses of Digiday.

Moses writes, “Increasingly, publishers are putting out newsletters that are designed to be a product unto themselves and read entirely in email. Similarly with the FT’s premium newsletters, they tend to have a lot of original content, and because their recipients are already subscribing, the FT doesn’t need them to click back to the site. It’s the opposite with the free newsletters, which have less original content and are designed for people to click through to the site, where they’ll likely hit the FT’s high paywall.

“It’s hard to tell if newsletters are actually getting people to subscribe, though. However, if they click to subscribe directly from the email, the newsletter can take some of the credit. (Jack wouldn’t say how much, though.)

“And while getting signups is good, the FT also ultimately wants its newsletters to pay for themselves. That’s hard for publishers to do because there’s no third-party auditor of newsletters.”

Read more here.