What is the profitability ratio for recruiting a subscriber?
Rossi: I’m not going to share the number but we have a point at which someone is profitable and there are ways we can test that. We can look at each channel and say, ‘People who come through the Web will pay this or people who come through direct mail or e-mail will pay that.’ Everything has a different point at which it’s profitable because the costs are all different. Some might be slightly higher at the front end but those people tend to stay with us longer. You can also look at revenue per customer—we have a lot of customers who give gift subscriptions. There are a number of different metrics you can layer in beyond direct mail or e-mail. FOLIO: The Economist seems to be focused on what you do well: print, increasingly online. How do ancillaries fit in and what are you doing beyond traditional print and online products? Rossi: We’ve got products that fill a reader need. The Economist is available on the Kindle. We have an iPhone app coming out shortly. Then we’ve got other products
