TO:George Friedman, Founder and CEO

Beth Bronder, Senior Vice President, Corporate & Government Solutions

FROM:Amy Fisher, Director, Corporate and Government Marketing

John Gibbons, Customer Service Manager

DATE:October 11, 2010

SUBJECT: Marketing launch and promo strategies for the institutional site

George/Beth – John and I outlined the following strategies for your review surrounding the launch and promotion of the new institutional site. Let us know if you have any questions.

TRANSITION PROMOTIONS

There are two categories of subscribers that need transitioning to the new site: regular enterprise subscribers and IP authentication users.

We propose three rounds of electronic promotions, beginning three weeks prior to the user transition date, to alert subscribers of new features and enhancements. Regular enterprise subscribers will receive these communications directly. For IP authentication users, promotions will be sent to our POCs with requests that they share the information with their teams of users. Prior to promotion efforts, the marketing team will need a firm launch date as well as final details on all new content features, the dossier system and other navigation enhancements.

Letter from George(three weeks prior to transition)

The first communication to users will be a letter from George (written by the marketing team and approved by GF). It will be formatted in HTML with the STRATFOR logo at the top and George’s digital signature at the bottom. The letter will contain clear messaging about the new site and its enhanced content/features in an easy-to-read, bulleted format. It will also state when users can expect their transition to occur.

Landing page promo(two weeks prior to transition)

The second communication to users will be an HTML that gets users even more excited about the subscription enhancements they’ll receive as a result of the transition. The message will include graphics and marketing language about benefits. It will also include a link to a landing page (created in cooperation with the graphics and IT teams) on our site which goes into more in-depth details, especially about the dossier system.

Flash demo promo(one week prior to transition)

The final promotion will take a similar approach to the above mentioned effort. However, this promo will have a built-in link to a Flash demo of the site (created in cooperation with the graphics team). This demo will spotlight the new look, features, content and applications for the professional user.

TRANSITION STRATEGIES

As of October 11, 2010, we have a total of 337 Corporate Accounts of which 54 are IP Authenticated. The transition of IP Authenticated accounts presents a unique opportunity as there are no individual email addresses for each user by which to communicate. We propose a pop-up window a la the session limit notification for IP Authenticated users. The pop-up would contain a very brief “Click here to read more”- type message with an option to permanently dismiss the window or to ‘remind me later’.

Once the site is finalized and ready to launch, we propose a tiered approach to transition. This approach will help the team work through any outstanding issues and will help control the volume of in-bound calls to customer service.

The first phase will involve one week of beta testing among a group of power users pre-selected from specific accounts (approx 10-20 accounts). Next, we propose transitioning along the following guidelines:

  • Transition smaller one to five user accounts in batches throughout the first week – If there are any technical difficulties we can temporarily pause the transition. We transition the smaller accounts first to weed out any bugs before transitioning our larger accounts.
  • Transition of the largest accounts (guidelines can be drawn up just before launch and based on numbers of users) will be towards the end of the transition phase.

As subscribers are transitioning to the new product, we also propose adding a pop-up when they first log in to remind them of the product change (in case they didn’t see the email promotions and especially in the case with IP authentication users). It can include a link to the Flash demo, and we can build in a cookie so users will only see it the first time they access the new site.

PRE-LAUNCH PRODUCT PROMOTIONS (existing customer upgrades and new business)

Prior to the new site launch, we should begin promotions to encourage users to subscribe/upgrade early. I would recommend offering a special “charter rate” that could be promoted in conjunction with the landing page and Flash demo marketing tools developed for the user transition.

  • Current “professional” paid individual subscribers (identified based on email address) – promote the charter rate and new benefits to encourage them to upgrade their subscriptions
  • “Professional” users on the free list (identified based on email address) –promote the charter rate and new benefits to encourage them to subscribe
  • Prospects in Salesforce – promote the charter rate and new benefits to encourage them to sign up early for group subscriptions

TRIALS

I am currently working with the IT department to developtrial landing pages that meet the needs of the business team and institutional trials. Our needs are a tad different than what the consumer side is currently doing, but we will be mirroring their general concept for the most part. Until the new product is ready, professional users will be steered to our new landing page and will be receiving trials to the existing site. Once the new site launches, those trials will happen on the new product.

The new landing page template will be set up by IT, but I will receive training and will have the ability to create customized pages as needed for specific marketing campaigns, strategic partners, speaking engagements, etc. We are building in a notification system to monitor registrations so that reps can be alerted when someone signs up from their territory. We will also have the ability to monitor track sources and trial end dates.

POST-LAUNCH PRODUCT PROMOTIONS (new business)

Once the new site has launched, we should issue a press release that can be circulated to our partners (and potential to customers/prospects). The press release will be more of a sales and marketing tool, and we should encourage our partners to announce the new offering in their member newsletters and correspondence (many of them have already indicated a willingness to do this). We could also include information in the release about how to register for a trial to the new product. (NOTE: strategic partner proposals special partner-specific trials and member discount offers.)

With Salesforce reconfigured and cleaned up (and hopefully integrated with Eloqua soon – see background information at the end of the memo), regular email marketing campaigns can begin to educate contacts about the new site, STRATFOR as a whole, as well as well as our full product offering and the business value we can bring to their organizations. With the new customization in the database, we can identify specific products, market sectors and geographic areas of interest to clients and prospects, enabling us to tailor campaigns in a much more strategic manner.

======

BACKGROUND ABOUT SALESFORCE REBUILD, RECONFIGURATION AND CLEAN-UP

The business side has historically been using SalesForce (a separate system from the consumer side) to manage its customers and prospects. However, the system was set up years ago and has not been utilized, configured or managed correctly for quite some time. As a result, the system was seriously outdated and needed a massive amount of attention to prepare it for a new sales team and mass marketing purposes.

Major initial problems

  • There were 10,000 records initially in the system, but only 3,000 were active contacts/leads that we had engaged with in the last 18 months
  • No one on the current staff was trained as a SalesForce configuration/system expert so no one could effectively manage the system
  • The system had been over-customized and was not functioning to its intended potential
  • There were no standard policies/procedures in place for using the system and managing
  • There was no way to identify what contacts were prospects for different product types/areas of interest
  • There was no way to track marketing campaigns as they tie back to contacts
  • There was no integration with Outlook to track client correspondence
  • The activities functionality was not being utilized to track rep weekly activities
  • There was no quality control in place to monitor old records and expired opportunities

Configuration (completed externally)

We hired a consultant to review and reconfigure our system so we could utilize it effectively. Their expertise was essential in getting us to where we needed to be with the system.

  • Restructured user rights and access
  • Eliminated over-customized fields
  • Identified appropriate required fields
  • Added fields to identify areas of interests (market sector and geo areas)
  • Added fields to identify “source” of contact/account/lead
  • Updated product line-ups
  • Streamlined reporting process
  • Activated Outlook integration
  • Created sales management reports

Clean-up (completed internally)

  • Purchased licenses for Demand Tools which is a plug-in to the system that helps with database management and clean-up
  • Deleted all old records (contacts we have not engaged with in the past 18 months)
  • Reassigned all leads/contacts/accounts/opportunities to the appropriate rep
  • Reviewed all leads/contacts/accounts
  • Reviewed all open, expired opportunities and updated status
  • Deleted Vertical response integration from the system

Training

  • Set up clear policies/procedures for using the system and created a STRATFOR/SalesForce user manual
  • Trained Amy Fisher, Kelly Tryce, John Gibbons and Matt Tyler as system administrators
  • Trained the entire sales team on how to use and manage the new system
  • Trained the business sales team on how to use the activities function for their weekly reports

Lead generation

  • Purchased a license to Leadership Libraries (gives the team extensive access to contacts across the public and private sectors)
  • Added 10,800 more recent/viable leads to the system from a master spreadsheet I had been keeping since I started (contacts came from event attendee lists, STRATFOR execs, independent rep research and access to old database subscriptions)
  • Goal is to extend partner relationships to gain access to more attendee lists and databases to continue growth in this area

Projects still in progress

  • Deleting old reports/dashboards from the system (technical issue we are working through)
  • Deduping leads and contacts (to be finalized this week)
  • Dedupe the business database against the free and paid lists (to begin this week)
  • This is an essential step before beginning mass marketing campaigns (we don’t want to send certain types of msgs to folks that are already customers)
  • Fields have been added to our system so we can identify if one of our contacts is already engaged with us in some manner
  • Contacts from our database that are on the free list need to be removed from the free list; we don’t want free list offers being sent to folks we are pitching institutional deals to

Final step

STRATFOR currently uses Eloqua for our mass marketing efforts. It is an amazing email deployment system that also “plugs in” to SalesForce to create some very powerful sales/marketing tools. I have found a cost-effective partner that can assist us with the integration and train the team on prospecting tools. I would like to make this happen before we begin serious efforts because it will help us track campaigns and lead response much better (minimal investment; integration takes approx 2 weeks).

NOTE:completing the Salesforce database rebuild, reconfiguration and clean-up finally puts the business side in a position to effectively commence targeted mass marketing efforts via email. We now have “clean” data with reliable customer/prospect information. Plus, the integration with Eloqua will enhance our campaign tracking functionality, as well as our ability to elevate and prioritize leads based on campaign response. This is huge for sales and marketing growth moving forward.