FT using data to drive revenue

Eric Pfanner of the New York Times writes about how the Financial Times is using data about what its readers view on its website to increase its revenue.

Pfanner writes, “When a reader signs up for an online subscription, The FT can track every click. That makes it easier to tailor content and new services to their interests. When customers let their subscriptions lapse, The FT can pursue them via e-mail and other means in an effort to get them to reconsider.

“In businesses where getting to know one’s customers has long been essential, this might not seem revolutionary. But Mr. Ridding said improvements in collecting and mining customer data were a big reason digital sales accounted for 24 percent of The FT’s revenue last year, a big jump from 19 percent a year earlier and a considerably higher percentage than many other publishers can claim.

“The FT, one of the few papers to charge readers successfully on the Internet, said it had 207,000 subscribers to its Web site and other digital versions of its newspaper, up 50 percent from a year earlier. It has also sold more than 1,000 corporate subscriptions to its digital content, and revenue from this source rose 30 percent last year, Mr. Ridding said.

“While The FT is making a big push to generate more revenue from readers, better information on its customers has also helped with advertising, which rose at double-digit rates last year after a weak 2009, he said. Advertisers, no longer content with a scattershot approach, want to know more and more about their audiences: where they live, where they travel, what they read, what they buy and more.”

Read more here.