Diamond, Inc. case study

Diamond, Inc. was founded in 1913 with the launch of “Economic Journal Diamond.” Since that time, the company has grown as a publisher working mainly in the areas of finance, industry, management, and investment.

Having expanded its business throughout the 20th century, 2007 proved to be a major turning point for Diamond: they launched Diamond online in response to a media landscape that was shifting to digital.

Providing free content, Diamond online successfully grew into one of Japan’s leading Web media platforms in finance and business. Diamond online not only earned significant traffic, but also became a major source of revenue for the company.

But the business model was dependent on advertising — and this posed some challenges.

According to Yuji Aso, Head of Business Media Editorial Department at Diamond, “While we were making good progress with advertising revenue, there was an urgent need to diversify our revenue sources within the changing market environment. And there was an opportunity to provide exclusive content to our readers through online subscriptions.”

So, they decided to launch a paid digital subscription service by establishing a paywall within Diamond online that would make it possible to disseminate the high-quality content that had previously mainly been reserved for paid print media.

Diamond realized that their subscription service would require a platform on which to manage revenue-generating pricing packages, contracts, billing, collections, and KPIs. So it went searching for a subscription management solution that could help it meet launch goals.

Serendipitously, Aso came upon a book that had been published by Diamond, the Japanese translation of Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo’s Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future — and What to Do About It. Zuora’s vision of improving CLV and maximizing revenue by means of an optimal subscription journey resonated with Diamond. And Zuora’s functionality, usability, broad customer base of 1000+ companies, extensive Japanese language support, and cost were a good fit with Diamond’s requirements.

It only took 4 months to implement Zuora and launch Diamond online’s paid Premium Membership Service. Now live on Zuora Central, Diamond can reduce the overall time and cost required to respond to customer demands and iterate with new pricing, packaging, and offers — which means they have the ability to continuously improve the lifetime value of customers through tailored content.

Looking ahead, Diamond, Inc. is working to expand its paid content and increase the number of paying subscribers. According to Aso, “In our 3-year plan, our goal is to build this subscription service into a major revenue stream, cross-selling with other new subscription services, and upselling to plans with higher price points.”

In short, as Aso notes, “Introducing subscriptions made it possible for us to focus our efforts on creating essential content that customers truly want to read. And with Zuora we will be able to make continuous improvements to our offerings based on customer feedback.”