How the Financial Times’ registration strategy transformed anonymous reach into recurring revenue

This case study is drawn from the FT Strategies report, The Power of Registration: Turning Anonymous Visitors into Known Users, which examines the development of a clear registration strategy. The case study explains how registration evolved into a product that accelerates the FT’s subscriber conversion, increases average revenue per user (ARPU), and strengthens its market position.

You can read more about FT Strategies' work with Project Syndicate, as part of the recent Subscriptions Academy EMEA 2025 programme, on The Audiencers website.

Situation

Over the past 15 years, the Financial Times has grown its subscriber base to more than three million paying digital subscribers. A central driver of its business-to-consumer (B2C) growth has been its focus on registration as a mechanism to both gather first-party data and engage users more deeply with its products.

As a premium publisher, The FT’s growth has depended on converting anonymous traffic into known users, then systematically progressing them toward subscription.

Registration was identified as a strategic lever for achieving three core commercial goals:

1. Expand its pool of known users to improve conversion efficiency.
2. Increase ARPU through personalisation and higher advertiser value.
3. Reduce reliance on third-party data and platform-controlled distribution.

The FT first launched a metered access model in 2007 and has experimented extensively with its visibility, enforcement rules and data capture requirements since.

Action

The FT’s approach to registration centres on three main pillars:

1. Making the registration proposition valuable
2. Using first-party data to enable personalisation
3. Continually refining the registration wall

1. Making the registration proposition valuable

Registration is treated as a product in its own right and not simply a stepping stone to an FT subscription. Users who register are able to access more content than anonymous users. The value exchange is explicitly stated and clear.

Once registered, users receive:

• Unlimited access to free articles
• A monthly allowance of three premium articles
• The ability to comment, save and share content
• Topic follows and personalised alerts

The FT’s content architecture underpins this progression: roughly 15% of content is free, 77% standard and 8% premium. This balance creates both accessibility and scarcity.

2. Using first-party data to enable personalisation

The FT only asks for an email address at the point of registration, reducing friction and minimising drop-off. Additional data, such as job role or industry, is collected progressively. This improves completion rates while building a high-quality, consented dataset.

This data underpins the product experience. Declared interests and behavioural signals impact on-site content recommendations, homepage experiences and lifecycle messaging.

3. Continually refining the registration wall

The FT regularly tests aspects of its registration walls, including the timing, placement and information requested from users.

Earlier hard enforcement increased bounce rates and reduced advertising revenue. This led the FT to shift to a more flexible approach: prompts appear at moments of clear value exchange, and data capture is progressive rather than front-loaded.

Registration is also seen in tandem with other channels, including newsletters.

Impact

For the FT, its registration strategy has underpinned its growth to 3 million paying digital subscribers and its overall profitability.

Registered users are more valuable in several ways:

• Subscription conversion: Convert at between three and 40 times the rate of anonymous readers
• Advertising revenue: Command 45 per cent higher advertising rates than non-logged-in users, when at least three demographic data points are available.
• Trial uplift: Convert around 10 per cent more triallists to subscription as a result of a more personalised experience.

Key Takeaways

For news and wider publishing decision makers and leaders, the FT model demonstrates:

• Registration must be treated as a standalone product layer — with its own value proposition, KPIs and roadmap — but explicitly designed to feed subscription growth.
• The value exchange must be explicit, differentiated from anonymous users and immediately experienced through premium sampling or enhanced functionality.
• The registration wall requires continuous testing of wall timing, messaging, placement and required data fields to balance friction and revenue.

At FT Strategies, we help publishers build retention and revenue models that are grounded in audience insight, rigorous testing and long-term value creation. Whether you’re exploring AI-enabled journeys, churn diagnostics or personalised lifecycle strategies, book a call with our expert team to see how we can create measurable impact for your organisation.