Situation

Our client was a leading Indian digital-first publication, one of the only publications in the country with exclusively premium content. The publication was eager to evolve its subscription model while preserving its premium DNA and core values. FT Strategies discovered their access model had been historically hard, but there was an opportunity to showcase its best content through increased sampling - in an effort to attract and retain new users.

Intervention

As part of the engagement, FT Strategies helped the publication showcase its value proposition to potential new users who might be unfamiliar with what the subscription plan includes. The project team designed an experiment that would offer a low-cost 14-day trial 48 hours after a user signs up.

The hypothesis was that trialists would be able to build user habits with the publication during the trial period and then be more likely to subscribe in the future.

Results

• The publication experienced success with generating trial starts from users targeted with additional messaging
• The campaign’s email strategy had a healthy open rate, signalling attractiveness of the offer
• During the experiment, the publication built a tech stack that would allow them to quickly amend the parameters of the trial for future iterations - which would allow testing of alternative ways to sample the value proposition amongst a wider range of first-time users without cannibalisation of the wider product