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About The-Ken

The Ken is a pan-Asian, digital news outlet that publishes online stories on topics like business, finance, green tech, education, commerce, and many more every weekday. Focused on narrative storytelling and deep reporting, it aims to bring a fresh approach to business stories for audiences in the region and beyond. It was launched in Oct 2016.

They have journalists reporting from eight cities in six countries across Asia - Bengaluru, Bangkok, Delhi, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Mumbai and Singapore. They serve businesses as well as individual customers. Their subscribers include organizations like Netflix, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Top educational institutes like IIMs and ISB subscribe to them too.

Newsletters by The Ken

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Podcasts by The Ken

Market and Competition

Competition remains fierce in the newsletter market as there are several options for readers to subscribe based on their interests. The Ken has made a place for itself amongst legacy media houses like Mint, Business Today, and Moneycontrol. Serving markets outside India puts it in competition with global media giants like NYT, Time, ET, FT, and Wall Street Journal.

Differentiating factors for The Ken has been its quality and in-depth research journalism. Having newsletters based on specific niches helped it gain subscribers globally. Ken's podcasts on Spotify have over 4.5 rating on average. As per The Ken's website, it has 5,00,000+ subscribers globally. Teams from 100+ companies read The Ken.

The Global Daily Newsletters market is projected to reach US$ 18660 million, increasing from US$ 12540 million in 2022, with a CAGR of 6.4% during the period of 2023 to 2029 (Source). Assuming a similar growth rate given the technology enablement and tech-first business growth in the country, we can safely conclude The Ken has the potential to acquire users exponentially as the newsletter market in India is still at its early growth stage.

Pricing Comparison

Below are the yearly prices for their recommended plan as per their respective website.

• The corporate prices are per user for The Ken. It decreases if the number of users increases.
• The corporate prices are for 5 users for The Morning Context (TMC). It increases if the number of users increases.
  

Reviews - Online and Peers

The reviews - this acts as an influencer or a blocker during the decision and action steps for users. The discussions with The Ken subscribers and non-subscribers suggested that reviews from peers and online channels helped them make the final call. The price point has been a key concern while choosing to subscribe or not as the WSJ+Mint combo comes at a similar price.

Here are some snapshots from a Reddit thread:



User's opinion on posters question:

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The conversation indicates that Ken's competitors are "The Morning Context" and "WSJ+Mint". This provides us with an important insight, the marketing pitch for The Ken should highlight its core benefits and value prop according to the reader's persona, enabling them to subscribe to the newsletter.

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Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Insights from user research suggest that ICP for The Ken are both B2B and B2C customers. Here we will further narrow down the ICPs and with the help of the ICP prioritization framework shortlist a few in each group.

B2B User Group

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B2C User Group

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ICP Prioritization

We will prioritize the ICPs based on the following parameters:

1. Adoption Curve
2. Frequency of Use Case
3. Appetite to Pay
4. TAM
5. Distribution Potential

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Based on the framework we will prioritize Company A and Company D in the B2B segment. In the B2C segment, we will prioritize Persona 1 and Persona 2.

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Calculating the TAM, SAM, and SOM for The Ken

As per the prioritized ICP, we will target customers with an income of 10,00,000+ in India.

As per the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), 40.12 Lakh people in all of India had a salary of over INR 10 Lakh. These 40 lakh people achieved this solely through a salary and do not include business income, rents, capital gains, and other sources of income. (Source)

So, the TAM is 40 Lakh

As per the prioritized ICP, the age group we prioritized is 25-35. As per various sources, we are assuming 15% of countries population lies between this age group. Extrapolating this to our use case,
we get: 40 lakh X 15% = 6 Lakh

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So, the SAM is 6 Lakh

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But, given the competition in the category from existing and upcoming players we will assume the obtainable market is 20%.

So, the SOM is 1.2 Lakh

Considering the Average Order Value of 4,000 per user per year the revenue opportunity is 48,00,00,000 in India.

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This provides us with a crucial insight, to acquire more users and expand revenue opportunities we will need to tap into students and young professionals in the age group of 18-25. To complement our findings the subscription cost of The Ken for students is the lowest compared to the competitors. Considering this insight we will deep-dive into acquisition channels we will want to prioritize and experiment with. But, before that, we will analyze existing acquisition channels.

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Existing Acquisition Channels - Analysis

• Organic Channel
  
  As per The Ken's CEO, they have acquired the majority of the customers with word-of-mouth (WOM) publicity. WOM is the most efficient source of acquiring customers and every brand aims for it as the CAC is negligible. But, in the case of a newsletter service, the distribution could be limited. This leaves a lot of revenue and acquisition opportunities on the table.
  
• Referral
  
  The Ken's referral process allows existing subscribers to gift a paid article to their friends, family, or colleagues. The gift link can be shared across multiple social media platforms. But, subscribers have a limit on articles they can gift in a month. The recommended subscription allows subscribers to gift only 5 paid articles per month.
  
  The image below displays the article gifting experience in The Ken's iPhone app. This is displayed after the reader completes reading the article. This validates that the user has experienced a happy moment as they have read the article.
  
  
  
  The image below displays the marketing copy and article preview when a subscriber wants to gift a paid article on WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and X respectively. The copy creates an urgency and exclusiveness but it lacks personalization. The subscriber gifting the article gets no real benefits from this action. Hence, a lack of motivation could be a challenge here. In our experiment, we will look into solving motivation for subscribers.
  
  
  
• Sales Outreach
  
  In a 2021 interview, Ken's CEO shared they have hired one sales representative to acquire B2B clients. Given its growth since then, we can safely assume that The Ken has adopted a sales-driven approach for B2B clients. It takes effort and communication to nurture B2B leads. Enabling efficient communication is an effective channel for acquiring B2B customers.

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Acquisition Channels for The Ken

We will run experiments on 3 acquisition channels. We have narrowed down them based on the Channel Acquisition framework.

1. Paid Ads: As The Ken is at its growth stage we will prioritize acquiring customers using this channel as this allows us to experiment at a high rate and have the ability to scale.
2. Referral Program: With the existing WOM and designing an effective referral program solving for motivation will provide us an opportunity to acquire customers with lower CAC. This requires minimum effort to set up and maintain.
3. Partnership Program: Moonshot Idea
   Create a bundle plan with leading publishers like "Time" or "NYT".

Paid Ads

We will use the campaign framework here:

• Channel selection
  Instagram, Facebook, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn
• Audience segment
  Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook - 25 to 35 age bracket, tier 1 cities, interest in business and tech, likes attending conferences and traveling
  Google and YouTube - 25 to 45 age bracket, tier 1 and 2 cities, interest in business and tech
• Campaign structure
  

• Ad Creative
  We will experiment with static and video creatives depending on the value prop.
  A few Value Props for The Ken:
  

Based on this we will experiment with different messaging to see what resonates most with the ideal customers.

Campaign Measurement:

We will track key performance indicators (KPIs) based on our objectives:

Referral Program:

We will use the Referral Design Framework:

• Who will we ask for a referral?
  To ask for a referral we will need to validate whether or not the reader has experienced a happy moment. Completing reading an article can be considered a happy moment.
  Hence, every reader will see an option to gift a paid article after they complete reading it.
• How will this customer discover the referral program?
  Every reader will see an option to gift a paid article after they complete reading it.
  
  
• Why will they refer?
  We will introduce benefits for the customers to share the article. If 3 users subscribe using their referral link or coupon code they will get a 15% discount on their next year's subscription.
• How will they share it?
  Customers can share the exclusive link via text message, X, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.
• How will these users track their referrals?
  We will create a dashboard in the accounts tab allowing customers to track and manage their referrals.
• How will they keep referring?
  We will introduce staging rewards for the customers.
  If 5 users subscribe using their referral link or coupon code they will get a 30% discount on their next year's subscription.
  If 8 users subscribe using their referral link or coupon code they will get a 50% discount on their next year's subscription.
  

Partnership Program

We will explore partnership opportunities with leading media giants like "NYT or "Time".
This will reaffirm its position in the premium space and open the opportunity to acquire a wider audience. It will provide The Ken the opportunity to enter new markets and continue expanding its global audience.
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