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We empower our customers to achieve their growth ambitions by developing new strategies, propositions and experiences. Here are some of our latest insights to inspire new ideas to drive customer growth in the arts sector.

FT Strategies in partnership with Substrakt convened senior stakeholders from leading UK arts organisations to discuss the most pressing topics in the industry today. In this article we have summarised why these topics are more important than ever.

Arts organisations are undergoing a shift from public funding to diversifying their revenue and serving new audiences. Here's how organisations should respond to position themselves for success.

With a recession looming, subscription fatigue is a common concern for businesses with recurring fees. Here are how five membership organisations are navigating this and how to build a resilient membership business.

Arts organisations are creating “innovative membership offerings” to satisfy creative communities in both the physical and digital worlds. Here are five organisations that are diversifying their offerings and ways of working.

Supporting the growth of the National Theatre’s new on-demand streaming platform

After the National Theatre's successful launch of their online streaming service during the pandemic, they approached our team to support them in making it a sustainable and continuous revenue stream. We worked collaboratively to create a roadmap towards a sustainable subscription model and provided practical advice on reducing subscriber churn.

Director of Digital, Emma Keith, said "their knowledge of subscription businesses is unparalleled and backed up with real-world experience. They challenged us to think outside our comfort zone in a supported yet rigorous way".

How FT Strategies can help

We power customer growth through creative and dynamic digital transformation strategies from conception to execution.

Staffed by the experts who successfully transformed the FT’s business model in the face of disruption, FT Strategies can help you to exceed your ambitions by delivering a sustainable growth strategy that will improve your customer engagement, retention, revenue and profit.

Wherever you are on your digital transformation journey, we can help you move forward, faster.

Acquire new customers

We use data and metrics to build a picture of who your prospects are so you can identify, understand, attract and engage the right people and the right time. Our expert consultants will guide you through:

  • Customer segmentation and persona development
  • Content discovery and distribution strategies
  • Lead generation and lead nurturing
  • Audience engagement and diversification
  • Editorial innovation and content strategy

Monetise Assets

Pricing can be a thorny topic. Charge too high and you won’t retain your customers. Charge too low and you’ll miss out on opportunities for growing your recurring revenue. How can you gauge your customers’ willingness to pay, increase ARPU through optimised pricing, and avoid cannibalisation? Our monetisation experts will help you understand:

  • Price sensitivity and optimum price points
  • Engagement-based and dynamic pricing
  • Cross-selling and upselling existing customers
  • Lifetime value modelling

Drive Engagement

FT Strategies help financial organisations create a base of highly engaged customers, reduce churn, increase LTV and ARPU by defining exactly what engagement means to you, and building an analytical foundation to influence your customer’s engagement patterns. We specifically focus on:

  • Defining your North Star metric
  • Customer segmentation and personalisation strategies
  • Creating a customer engagement programme
  • Next best action modelling
  • Measuring value using data and analytics

Boost Retention & Lifetime Value

Customers become loyal when they’re highly engaged and connected to your brand, mission and values. That’s why it’s crucial to understand where they are in the decision-making process, so you can predict triggers for churn and create a strong safety net at each step of the customer lifecycle. Our retentions solutions focus on:

  • CRM and customer engagement strategies
  • Loyalty and winback strategies
  • Involuntary churn and payment optimisation
  • Churn prediction and Lifetime value modelling
  • Dynamic pricing and rightsizing

Digital Transformation

Wherever you are on your digital transformation journey, we can help you create a clear roadmap with key metrics to measure success along the way. Our digital transformation solutions include:

  • An organisational diagnostic and cultural assessment
  • A clear roadmap to accelerate transformation across your organisation
  • Implementing a North Star methodology
  • A capabilities assessment, so you know where to prioritise your resources for maximum results
  • A strategy to build a recurring revenue model

I cannot compare it to any other consulting project that I have engaged with before. The access to unique knowledge is inspiring and stimulates many old and new questions in my organisation.

Director of Subscription Strategy

This is a new form of consulting. You're coming with the brains and the FT experience. You're changing consulting for the better, I really mean it!

Group Chief Data Officer

The recommendations, experiments and quick wins that come out of our sessions are invaluable. Also, having access to experts has been great, particularly as we look to create our own RFV propensity model.

Director of Consumer Marketing

One of the most valuable consulting projects I've been involved with. The FTS team was incredibly knowledgeable and responsive as they guided us through the process.

Director of Analytics Analytics Manager

Meet the FT Strategies team

The FT Strategies consulting team work hand-in-hand with the subject matter experts who delivered the Financial Times digital transformation. This model means we don’t stop at building the strategy. Our network of practitioners bring first hand experience of putting strategy to practice and driving tangible business results.

Joanna Levesque
Managing Director
Joanna Levesque
Managing Director

Joanna leads the FT Strategies business with responsibility for the P&L . She is passionate about helping clients to transform and grow their businesses from an audience-led perspective. 

She started her consulting career  at Accenture, and ended up leading the Customer practice which she led to double digit growth, working with a range of clients across B2C and B2B companies including  media, arts, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods and financial services, and joins us from Manifesto Growth Architects, where she was one of four partners leading this independent business.  

Joanna is married with three children and lives in South West London. 

 

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Aled John
Deputy Managing Director
Aled John
Deputy Managing Director

Aled has over eleven years’ experience in the media, overseeing strategy, product, new venture creation and editorial. Previously he was Head of Membership Strategy and Business Development at Condé Nast, where he launched their B2B subscription title Vogue Business.

Aled cut his teeth in TV news at ITN and later received his MBA from Cambridge University. Outside of the day job, his kids keep him busy and he is also a trustee and director of DeliverAid, a charity helping those suffering from food poverty started during the pandemic.

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George Adelman
Director
George Adelman
Director

George joins us from Monitor Deloitte with over a decade of experience in strategy consulting and in-house advisory. Leading strategy development, service design and digital transformation teams, he has advised senior leadership from across both the public and private sectors.

He has an ACII and a Masters from the London School of Economics.

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George Montagu
Senior Manager
George Montagu
Senior Manager

George has spent the last four years guiding the FT’s data strategy as it balances revenue and risk. Most recently, he founded and continues to lead a cross-departmental FT team focused on the future of marketing & advertising in the context of restrictions on online tracking.

George also holds an MBA from IE Business School and is a very proud member of Surrey County Cricket Club.

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Tony Leung
Head of Commercial
Tony Leung
Head of Commercial

Tony manages our business development, sales operations and internal processes. His previous roles were as a Commercial Development Manager at CIL Management Consultants, which provided due diligence and strategic consulting to private equity funds, and as a Senior Research Analyst at Preqin, a global B2B information provider to the alternative assets industry.

He holds a Bsc in Economics from the University of Bath and is a keen squash player.

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Niall Crozier
Senior Manager
Niall Crozier
Senior Manager

Niall is a Senior Manager at FT Strategies with over 9 years experience in consulting. Prior to joining the FT, he held roles at Monitor Deloitte and Deloitte Digital helping some of the largest consumer, media and tech businesses in the world create and implement sustainable strategies.

Lettie Debenham
Senior Manager
Lettie Debenham
Senior Manager

Lettie has 10 years experience in management consulting and in-house strategy, previously at L.E.K. Consulting and Bulb Energy.

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Edouard Gilbert
Senior Manager
Edouard Gilbert
Senior Manager

Prior to joining FT Strategies, Edouard worked at KPMG as a Senior Consultant in strategy in financial services. He has worked on growth strategy projects, and specialised in finding innovative business models for both startups and legacy market players. Edouard also holds an Msc from Sciences Po Paris and ESSEC Business School.

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Aliya Itzkowitz
Manager
Aliya Itzkowitz
Manager

Aliya has 5+ years of experience across Media, Finance and Technology. She previously worked at Dataminr, brining A.I. technology to newsrooms across EMEA. Prior to that, she worked as a journalist at Bloomberg and as an analyst on Wall Street. She has a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from Said Business School, University of Oxford.

Ben Whitelaw
Manager
Ben Whitelaw
Manager

Ben is a Senior Consultant at FT Strategies with extensive experience working with global publishers.He previously worked on the Audience Diversity Academy to help six EMEA publishers diversify their audience and build engagement among target segments. Prior to joining FT Strategies, Ben was an independent newsroom and content strategy consultant. He has ten years of experience in newsroom transformation and audience development from his time working at The Guardian and The Times.

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