The data behind the FT’s success

Ken Doctor writes for the Nieman Journalism Lab about how the Financial Times has successfully made the transition from a print-only publication into one that focuses on digital delivery.

Doctor writes, “Want to know the secret sauce of the FT’s industry-leading crossover percentage? In Feburary, it offered these numbers: 286,000 print subscribers and 316,000 digital subscribers — the first newspaper to see digital surpass print. Of those 316,000 digital subs, though, 163,780 — or 51 percent of them — are subscriptions bought by companies for their employees. These are business-to-business sales, rather than business-to-consumer sales. Those are the fruit of another ahead-of-the-pack move by the FT. Under Caspar de Bono, FT Direct Licensing has built an first-of-its-kind direct business. Rather than leaving B2B customer sales relationships to aggregators like Lexis Nexis and News Corp.’s Factiva, the FT began converting corporate FT buyers to direct relationships in 2008. It sold those 163,000 digital subs through 2,787 separate annual licenses, up 40 percent from 2011. It also sells an additional 13,000 newspapers a day under these contracts for people who still like the feel of old-fashioned print. In addition, the FT has now extending its direct license business beyond companies to the education industry.

“Does this understanding of how the FT achieved its milestone change our sense of its crossover success? Yes and no. The FT, given its audience, had a unique ability to sell corporate subscriptions directly — and it took advantage of it. For most daily newspaper companies, the direct corporate license business is a stretch. Still, the notion of such licenses or group purchases, discounted or not — behind a paywall product — should encourage local publishers to think of local businesses, school districts, government offices, and PTAs in a new way. If dailies’ news and information are as critical locally as the FT’s is to a global business clientele, why not test a new model?”

Read more here.