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Personal Finance

At the start of 2024, the Financial Times launched a six-part personal finance email course authored by Personal Finance editor Claer Barrett. The course was designed to help people gain more control over their money by breaking down complex financial topics into simple, practical steps. Delivered as a weekly email series, the course covered areas like budgeting, tax, investing, and managing money within relationships.

This was a new type of product for the FT. Existing subscribers could access it for free, while non-subscribers were offered the full course plus eight weeks of FT access for a one-time fee of £19. The goal was to create an experience that served as both a value-add for current subscribers and an entry-point for new users. The course also tested whether structured, editorial-led content could drive acquisition and retention outside the traditional subscription model.

Impact and Key results

Over 34,000 users signed up within the first six weeks following launch, exceeding initial forecasts.

  • Conversion from pre-registration to paid purchase reached a strong 27%, demonstrating effective onboarding and persuasive flows.

  • Email open rates averaged 52% across the entire eight-week sequence, significantly higher than typical benchmarks, depending on the type of email the average is around 3 - 7% and 23% for (Signed up) Comms like this.

  • User feedback consistently praised the course’s approachable, empowering tone and its practical, actionable advice.

  • The framework and learnings from this project have been adopted by internal teams as a model for future newsletter-led acquisition and engagement campaigns across the FT (2 are currently in the works).

These results underscore the success of designing a complex editorial-led product that effectively balances educational value with commercial goals.

The Challenges

Designing a seamless, accessible journey for Sort Your Financial Life Out presented multiple challenges:

  • Multi-segment audience: The course needed to adapt dynamically for three distinct user segments, FT subscribers, registered users, and anonymous visitors, each with differing access rights, subscription states, and expectations of friction and trust.

  • Frictionless onboarding: Subscribers required an effortless sign-up experience, ideally a single-click registration, while registered and anonymous users needed clear, encouraging pathways towards payment and activation without confusion or delay.

  • Technical integration constraints: The solution had to work within the constraints of FT’s existing systems, including Bloomreach for email automation, the core FT account infrastructure, and Zuora for payment processing, each imposing limitations on journey flexibility.

  • Multi-channel clarity: Given that the course was delivered entirely through email over eight weeks, ensuring clarity, reassurance, and consistent user experience across different devices and touchpoints was critical to maintain engagement and reduce drop-off.

  • Balancing editorial integrity with commercial goals: The product needed to preserve the FT’s reputation for credible, expert financial advice, while clearly communicating pricing and nudging conversions in a way that felt supportive rather than salesy.

Research and Insights

To design an effective and user-centred experience, we began with research combining qualitative and quantitative insights:

  • User interviews and surveys: We engaged a sample of FT readers and prospective users to understand their attitudes, pain points, and needs around personal finance. Many expressed feelings of intimidation when approaching money management, but a strong desire to improve their knowledge.

  • Perceptions of FT financial content: While the FT was widely recognised as a credible source, feedback suggested the tone and complexity of existing personal finance content could alienate beginners. Users wanted something simpler, friendlier, and more practical.

  • Interest in structured learning: There was clear appetite for time-limited, beginner-friendly educational content that could be consumed at the user's own pace with a defined end point rather than an open-ended newsletter or blog post.

  • Trusted expert voice: Claer Barrett’s involvement provided significant reassurance and appeal, helping users feel confident they were learning from a reliable and empathetic expert.

  • Data analysis: Existing FT site analytics revealed significant drop-off during sign-up and payment steps in previous related products, signalling a need to simplify and streamline the buyflow.

These insights directly shaped decisions around tone, course structure, pricing strategy (a one-off fee), and the need for adaptive, personalised journeys for different user segments.

Journey mapping

As lead UX designer, I began by mapping segmented user journeys to visualise every step from discovery through to course completion:

  • Subscribers: The journey was designed to enable a smooth one-click sign-up with minimal barriers, followed by automated weekly email delivery and optional re-engagement prompts for inactivity.

  • Registered users: Recognising this group was more tentative, the journey included clear nudges to pay for the course via email after launch, with messaging designed to reassure and reduce friction.

  • Anonymous visitors: The flow prompted these users first to register an account, then follow the payment and activation steps, with messaging emphasising the value and ease of access.

Design Exploration

Early in the design process, I produced a range of low-fidelity wireframes to explore key questions around layout, content hierarchy, and interaction patterns:

  • Different landing page concepts tested the balance between visual appeal (imagery, video, Claer Barrett’s presence) and textual clarity, with attention to whitespace, font sizes, and button prominence.

  • Variations explored the placement of core assets like an introductory video and testimonials to build trust and motivate sign-up.

  • Layouts used auto-layout to enable flexible reordering of content slices based on editorial priorities and evolving team feedback.

  • I also designed early prototypes of onboarding screens, payment confirmation flows, and email module previews to visualise the end-to-end experience.

These wireframes and prototypes were shared in collaborative workshops with stakeholders, enabling rapid feedback cycles.

Designing the Experience

The core experience was designed around two principal landing pages:

  • A pre-launch registration page aimed to generate interest and capture leads ahead of the course release. This page clearly articulated the course’s value proposition, pricing, and schedule, with content adapted to the user’s subscription status.

  • A live sign-up page activated on launch day, guiding users through a simple and reassuring sign-up process tailored by user segment. This was promoted via email and paid media.

The course itself was delivered through a carefully paced series of weekly emails, each dedicated to a specific financial topic such as budgeting, taxation, and investing. Emails combined concise, jargon-free advice with interactive elements like quizzes and optional homework, designed to reinforce learning and encourage practical application.

Supporting these emails were downloadable PDFs, minimal, clean, and consistent worksheets designed to extend learning offline. Each PDF and email contained a short introduction from Claer, a practical exercise or worksheet, and space for reflection, all formatted for easy printing or mobile viewing.

The tone throughout was deliberately warm, approachable, and encouraging—helping to reduce user anxiety and promote a sense of achievable progress.

Measuring Success & Reflections

We measured total course enrolments and segmented them by user type:

  • Total enrolments: 34,500

  • Subscriber sign-ups: 6,200 (18%)

  • Registered users: 21,400 (62%)

  • Anonymous visitors: 6,900 (20%)

We mapped enrolment spikes against campaign pushes, revealing:

  • Email campaigns drove 55% of sign-ups. (these were banners and one off emails sent out to all segments)

  • FT site banners accounted for 22%. Including newsletter discovery.

  • Social media (organic + paid) brought in 18%.

  • Third-party newsletters and referrals added the remaining 5%.

2. Conversion Rate

Among non-subscribers (registered and anonymous users) we tracked:

  • Landing page to sign-up conversion: 18.3%

  • Course-to-subscriber conversion: 7.9% this represented over 2,000 new FT subscribers.

  • Top converting cohort: Registered users who completed 50% of modules and engaged with FT articles.

3. Retention & Subscription Uptake

We tracked user activity during the 8 week access period and beyond:

  • 68% of participants logged in weekly

  • 54% subscribed to at least one FT newslettes

  • 32% listened to an FT podcast episode

Key learnings and opportunities for future improvements:

  • Conducting early-stage user testing on onboarding and payment flows could surface usability issues sooner and reduce friction.

  • Introducing more personalisation within the course—for example, allowing users to select preferred topics or pacing might increase relevance and engagement.

  • Exploring richer interactive email content or community-building features could further enhance user motivation and retention.

Final Thoughts

This project was a compelling example of translating editorial expertise into a structured, user-friendly product. It showcased the importance of user research, cross-team collaboration, and iterative design to resolve complexity and deliver clarity.

The challenge of supporting multiple user segments and integrating diverse technical platforms required creativity and a strong focus on empathy ensuring users felt supported, not sold to.

The success of Sort Your Financial Life Out has not only benefited users but has also shaped FT’s approach to digital product design, reinforcing the value of accessible, expert-led learning journeys in building trust and engagement.