Better Business with the DN Card

Stockholm from above with DN-kortet. Photo: Roland Thornberg

Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter's customer club card, DN-kortet, started as a way of rewarding subscribers, but it has become much more than that. Some 230,000 DN-card holders can now choose to take advantage - or not - of a range of travel, entertainment and products especially chosen for them. Everything from tours in Turkey and China to rebates at the opera. The marketing is done via ads in the printed newspaper, at the dnkort.se website and at the DN-kortet Facebook page. There are even ads on the iPad newspaper DN+.

"DN readers are curious and interested in culture, they like the theater and other forms of entertainment, they want to travel to a place to learn about the culture rather than just to lay on a beach," says Roland Thornberg, manager responsible for the DN card for the past year. "Our goal is to provide a learning experience in everything we offer."  

From the beginning, subscribers were offered mostly products in the digital shopping site, but Thornberg says that since then they've looked at different kinds of suppliers. 

"Why sell products that anyone can sell?" Thornberg asks. "The goal is that readers' and DN's needs should be the guide rather than the advertisers'. We know increasingly more how you can communicate in different ways with different audiences, annd we've researched what they want via surveys, among other ways, so we can offer them something unique."

A unique experience can be a wine-tasting with DN's wine critic Bengt-Göran Kronstam in cooperation with Kosta Hotel, for example, a combination wine and crystal trip that includes glassworking professor Erika Lagerbielke. The trip to Turkey is another example.

"We arranged the travel in cooperation with a travel agency that earlier had worked with German and Swiss newspaper," says Thornberg. "The goal was to have 1,000 travelers but we ended up with 1,200. It's actually worked really well, and we have a new trip planned for the fall."

One of the challenges is reaching younger target groups. Cooperations between the DN card and cinema chain SF Bio and the photography museum Fotografiska are one way. Having more on digital channels is another. The DN card also has a special focus for its student subscribers.

"We've worked hard this year to get out more in digital channels and social media," says Thornberg. "We want to reach younger audiences, and that's hard work. Most of our subscribers are 50+. But we've noticed that a lot of our offers are interesting for both younger and older audiences."

One of the most popular events is Stockholm ovan jord (Stockholm from above), which the DN card developed together with book publisher Max Ström. On Sunday, some 6,500 DN card members got the chance to see Stockholm from one of 16 spots opened especially for the day, including the steeple of the Great Church in Stockholm's Old Town.

"It was the third year in a row we've done this," says Thornberg. "Last year we had 4,000, so it's grown from year to year. But the really big event is Stockholm underground, which we did in the fall, where we had 11,000 participants in 2010."

Previously, there was no spoken ambition to make a profit, but in recent years it's become obvious that it's possible to do so via the DN card.

"When we do trips and events we can get a good return without offering customers a worse price," says Thornberg. "What we take in from trips and events we can invest in things like Stockholm from above, and still take in revenues. Hopefully we'll come out even next year."

A digital initiative has been carried out during 2011. The site is more interactive and the newsletter sent out to the 140,000 who gave their e-mail addresses is more adjusted to the target audience. And before midsummer, there will even be a mobile site.

And the goal is to be even more niched in the future.

"With 230,000 subscribers, everyone can't like everything," says Thornberg. "We keep learning more about our target groups afterwards, which allows us to improve our offerings even more."