Financial Times consultancy offshoot offers access to minds behind its paywall success

The Nikkei-owned company has plans to diversify its revenue with the launch of a business consultancy featuring its data scientists and business insights. It offers access to the minds behinds the title’s healthy subscriber growth to brands and businesses who hope to replicate the success.

FT chief data officer Tom Betts­­­­ will lead the boutique consultancy by helping businesses democratize data across multiple departments, similarly to how news brands have to open up data across marketing, sales, editorial, social and more.

Betts said: “Since 1999, we’ve been transforming the Financial Times from a print publication financed by advertising, to a subscriber-first digital news service. Data sits at the heart of this transformation, enabling us to act on meaningful insights about our audience. This was pivotal to reaching one million paid-for readers earlier this year.’

“Through FT Strategies, we’ll apply these learnings to help other organisations build long-term and valuable relationships +with their customers and stay ahead of disruption in their markets.”

Launch clients include Bonnier, The Business of Fashion, Penguin Random House, and the V&A.

Hannah Telfer, managing director for audiences and audio at Penguin Random House UK, added: “Our ambition is for Penguin.co.uk to become the number one online destination for book discovery for readers. We are working with the FT Strategies team to learn from their experience and expertise to establish an outcome-driven model that will allow us to test, learn and scale to help us achieve that goal. As an editorially-led business that has embraced digital, we have found FT Strategies to be a highly credible partner bringing affinity, ambition and expertise.”

Earlier this year, the title announced that it had reached a record one million subscribers, three quarters of whom were accessing digitally.