The Nikkei-owned Financial Times is aiming to attract a new subscriber segment to its product range with the launch of the FT Edit app. Its target market is the 26m people who follow the company on social media but seldom subscribe – and are outside its core finance and professional market.
In that sense, it might be targeting an audience equivalent to that of, say, Morning Brew in the US. The fact that the daily newsletter (which more than doubled its revenue to $50m in 2021) is – like Business Insider and Politico – owned by Axel Springer might just make the FT a bit nervous about Springer’s plans for the UK and Europe. The New York Times’ rapid digital growth is also something to think about.
The new FT product will supply a curated range of eight articles each weekday with a ‘best of’ round up at the weekend. After a trial free and discounted offer period, the product will be charged at £4.99 per month. The Financial Times has reached 1m subscribers for its core offer but the new app demonstrates the company’s ambition to segment the market and head-off would-be competitors. FT Edit has been beta tested and the company is learning the reading habits of this wider demographic as well as aiming to limit any switch from core subscribers who are expected to remain with the flagship product for professional real-time news.
Further developments are being considered in news personalisation and expansion of the app beyond the current UK focus. Simultaneously, the main news brand is launching a community product to serve its most senior market segment with a weekly briefing note and access to professional service firms’ resources alongside FT events and forums in which to discuss topics relating to corporate performance and governance.
One big question about the FT’s diversification strategy is why it does not start to develop separate brands especially to capture young audiences outside the traditional range of the newspaper? It’s an age-old habit for newspapers to confine new products to ancillaries to the main brand. The success of both paid-for and free daily newsletters in the US – and the prospect of emulation in Europe – might prompt a re-think of the branding strategy.
But for now, the Financial Times is riding high, with a record 1m paying digital subscribers. It had reached the earlier milestone of 1m total subscribers, including print customers, in 2019. More than half of FT subscribers are based outside its UK base. In recent years, the FT has invested in expanding its readership in the US in particular, which now accounts for more than 20% of its subscribers.
The FT first introduced a paywall in 2002. It pioneered a ‘metered’ access model in 2007 before moving in 2015 to paid trials as its primary model. Digital journalism revenues are now equal to all of its other revenue streams combined, while the FT’s iconic pink newspaper continues to be profitable. In fact, the distinctive FT Weekend publication (whose impressive London festival is now being cloned in the US) has seen circulation increase by double digits in the past two years. The fact that it sells twice as many copies at a 40% higher cover price than the weekday print in the UK implies that the distinctive weekend edition may make virtually all of the FT’s profit.
