Executive Summary
Bluestream is a privately-held one-to-one marketing Web portal that was created by Bluetree Direct—a direct marketing company integrating traditional marketing with one-to-one marketing methodologies.
Since its start in 1996, Bluetree has developed a direct mail portal (Bluestream) for managing the development of Web to print workflow and mailings, personalized URLs (DirectWeb) for each direct mail piece, integrated Customer Relationship Management, and tools to support the workflow and management of systems online.
Bluestream management believes that their company actually competes with other forms of advertising;
Bluestream is, in fact, a medium in itself. The company believes that to bring in media dollars, an accurate ROI must be generated.
Target Audience
Although the company does not target vertical markets, their primary target—Print Service Providers (PSP)—covers most verticals. The company had notable success by targeting the real estate market with 50 customers in this segment. Another market focus is retail florists.
Bluestream is best suited to Print Service Providers searching for a product to extend their services.
Bluestream 2005 enables the ordering of marketing materials from Mac, PC, and Linux browsers and supports output directly to Postscript, PPML, or PDF file formats. E-Commerce and extensive reporting of user sessions provide an overview of all user interaction with the site. The system can be integrated with online chat to deliver real-time customer support 24/7.
Bluestream 2005 was developed to support powerful lead generation and marketing capabilities. The system has integrated the delivery of marketing campaigns by integrating direct mail, personalized Web sites and e-mail. Bluestream delivers a wide variety of campaign tracking with pURLs from targeted one-to-one campaigns including e-mail, direct mail, Google, and Overture. In addition, the system will track mass media campaigns with unique URLs. The system captures and measures individual responses with opt-in e-mail from any mass media campaigns including television, print ads, and radio.
Bluestream employs a total PDF workflow, and will take in any files in PDF format, but nothing native (Quark, Word, etc). Its WYSIWYG design tool allows the creation of templates and placement of blocks within the imported PDF template that can accept text, images, and other content from internal and external databases.
Bluestream automatically matches the design of (pURL) landing pages to selected template design and auto generates landing pages according to rules set up in the database. Clients can further customize these pages. Bluestream’s integral CRM tool is part of the software and it keeps track of questions, answers, responses, and actions and it can also be interfaced to another CRM database using APIs (this has not been done to date).
Based on landing page responses, prospects can be segmented according to pre-determined preferences for follow-up. Bluestream features extensive reporting capabilities by region, office, and agents (quite a bit like SalesForce.com’s reporting capabilities).
There is also a “data slicing” capability to provide reporting exactly as desired, with analysis of responses to key words and answers. Results can be further profiled for pinpoint targeting during subsequent campaigns. Bluestream software will also analyze “look alikes,” which are people in the database that share similar characteristics with respondents from other campaigns. These people can then be extracted for targeting in subsequent campaigns.
Product Focus
Bluestream 2005 includes a module to deliver a B2C or B2B portal experience, enabling customers to select print or marketing products, quote online, build product from templates supplied, and pay using e-commerce. The product features electronic proofing and client signoff capability.
Current Offering
Bluestream 2005 is positioned as a 360 degree Web to print solution, offering users the ability to securely access collateral, direct marketing, and ad creation online. The Bluestream e-procurement platform enables browser-based print ordering and supports output directly to Postscript, PPML, or PDF file formats. Client portals, e-commerce, automated invoicing and a customer service module deliver a complete package to manage sales, marketing, and production workflows.
Bluestream integrates print, e-mail, and personalized Web pages with full tracking. Their product focus / mantra focuses on generating an ROI: “Spend a dollar with us and we’ll generate another $15 in
business.”
A new CRM Dashboard shows campaign response rates and gives the value of each response (the sales dollars generated by the campaign). An Analytics module that will add additional dimension to lead profiling and grading is currently in R&D.
The system uses a user-friendly storefront with various levels of security to manage client interaction.
Templates can be developed and managed for ads, flyers, direct mail, and online catalogs for consistent branding.
Bluestream has developed significant expertise in marketing to the real estate vertical with over 50 clients in Florida, California, and Ontario. They also offer a complete turn-key system for florists ($10,000 additional cost), a calendar tool for professional sports, and an ad-sizer for catalogs. The following modules ($15,000 additional cost) make up their real estate program:
1. Farming 2. Keep in Touch 3. Just Listed / Just Sold
4. MLS Pull is another Real estate product triggered by MLS numbers that populates data and image fields automatically.
Bluestream has been developed with integral lead generation and reporting. With its personalized Web URL technology—DirectWeb—Bluestream provides every recipient of a campaign with its own URL which offers highly effective tracking and reporting on Web site use when viewed. Bluestream delivers a reports in a wide variety of areas, from e-mail click through rates to the number of responses from a direct mail campaign and even Google leads. The system can automate the management of marketing
campaigns by integrating direct mail, personalized Web sites, and e-mail.
Pricing
Several pricing models are offered. BlueStream is building a pricing program with a monthly fee structure (a new program they will soon introduce), and the software can also be purchased for $5,000 per portal for a 3 year subscription, plus a monthly maintenance / hosting fee of $175.00 for each portal.
A 3 year subscription charge for the Enterprise is $20,000, and this charge includes 3 portals. There is also a $5,000 integration fee and training charges, plus a monthly maintenance / hosting fee of $175.00 for each portal. Additional portals can be rented on a monthly basis.
The Real Estate Program has 4 modules. There is an additional cost of $15,000 for the real estate application software.
Another application solution is the Florist Program. This system remembers key events such as
anniversaries and birthdays and does automatic e-mails with flower selection. There is an additional cost of $10,000 for this program.
There is also a calendar tool used to generate calendars. This software has the ability to integrate photos from a sports event from the previous night or build a gift for grandma representing the first year of her grandchild’s life. Pricing for this software was not disclosed.
Training, Installation, and Support
Most installations require 1.5 days of training. This is included in the portal fee or subscription charge.
Customers & Users
Currently, the company has 5 sales representatives; 4 in the U.S. and 1 in Canada. The focus of the company is shifting from print service to direct marketing. The company uses Internet and search engine marketing to develop its own leads.
Bluestream has between 50 and 100 customers who resell its services to other companies. One such customer is http://www.printpelican.com/.
In terms of customers, number of users, or number of seats using the service / software, the aggregate total is several thousand. One customer, Marketing Connections in Canada, has Mercedes, Chrysler, and many other large enterprises as customers. Another major print service providers using BlueStream is Williamson Printing in Texas.
The IBM (Global) internal print services group uses the software to produce all printed collateral
materials, including all of the Global IBM marketing needs. The number of monthly impressions reaches millions per month. Several clients are doing over 2 million impressions monthly.
A single real estate customer—WCI Real Estate in FL—has 45 offices and 2000 agents. WCI resells the Bluestream service to their agents. Bluestream estimates WCI’s Print / fulfillment value to be about $2 million per year. The reason WCI uses the system is because they can generate a direct ROI from the system.
Other customers include Domino’s Pizza, Hewlett-Packard, the Canadian Post Office, Ingram Micro, and the Washington Post.
Competitors
The company reports XMPie and Printable as key competitors that are Web to print focused.
The company believes that if you’re not delivering ROI and 30% response rates, clients will use other methods. To bring in media dollars, an accurate ROI must be generated. Bluetree / Bluestream actually competes with other forms of advertising.
Contact Information Bluestream
http://www.mybluestream.com 5900 Falbourne Street
Mississauga, ON Canada L5R 3S7 Phone: (905) 890-5600 Fax: (905) 890-6061
FUSE Custom Site Executive Summary
Founded in 2001, L2 is a private, employee-owned company that has organically grown and maintained profitability through customer expansion and product sales. L2 is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and has a regional presence in Alexandria, VA. L2 specializes in making the delivery of complex communications very easy.
L2’s product line is called Fuse. It is a technology platform and next generation campaign management solution for highly personalized marketing and sales campaigns and collateral. Fuse is designed to increase the success rate of campaigns by leveraging personalized client data and integrating campaign delivery through print, e-mail, and Web channels.
The Fuse offering is delivered as an Application Service Provider (ASP) model. According to President and CEO Wrich Printz, “The value to our commercial printing partners of an ASP model is that we manage the service for them. The commercial printer doesn’t need to worry about servers, IT
infrastructure, or fire walls. We accelerate the “time to deployment” of integrated campaign management solutions. In enterprise accounts, we can accelerate marketing campaigns by eliminating IT barriers that can slow down marketing campaign implementation.”
Target Audience
L2 has targeted enterprise and digitally savvy print service provider partners. L2's print channel partners (commercial and digital print service providers) include The Mahoney Company, Magjak, Palmer Printing Inc., Best Strategy, and several others.
L2 also serves Fortune 1000 customers across a range of industries including healthcare, banking and financial services, insurance, government, and hospitality industries. Fuse has delivered campaigns for Intel, HP, Hyperion, Kaiser Permanente, United States Postal Service, Target, Harris Private Bank, and AutoDesk.
Fuse is best suited to users of SalesForce.Com or companies needing to deliver vital or regulated content to customers and prospects.
Fuse is an on-demand, Web-service solution that allows distributed enterprise sales forces, resellers, and advertising and creative agencies to securely access branded collateral and create and order personalized communications. The key capabilities of Fuse include:
• Exact campaign measurement: Create multi-channel customized communications integrating personalized direct mail, URL/Web sites, and e-mail campaigns. Update original data for consolidated reporting.
• Marketing message control: Empower remote sales teams and affiliates to generate their own campaigns without losing control of your message and your brand.
• Increased campaign response: Merge your customer sales data with your marketing documents to produce completely personalized onto-one direct-mail pieces, personalized URLs/Web sites, and e-mails.
• Cost savings: Leverage a distributed print model with select Fuse printer channel partners to reduce costs. Users can route pieces from the point of order entry to the best locations for a turnkey service.
• Stress-free creation and mailing: Just submit an order, and the Fuse system does the heavy lifting of delivering your message in the right format to your customers.
• Easy campaign production: Import and edit your existing creative content within Fuse using a centralized Web-based interface and integrate it with your customer sales data.
L2 says that it specializes in making a hard process very easy. The key differentiator is that Fuse allows companies to segment and implement highly focused, highly customized, multi-channel marketing campaigns without having to build the technology required to do this.
Product Focus
Fuse is a software as a service (Application Service Provider) solution. It is designed to allow businesses of any size to create highly customized and personalized communications for delivery across multiple channels. Fuse provides access to shared creative resources. The system allows collaborative design and ordering of on-demand message generation for authorized users.
The ultimate objective of the Fuse offering is to reduce the time it takes to create and deliver a campaign.
In some instances turnaround time has been cut by as much as 80%, and costs have been reduced by 25%.
As a Web-based, hosted application, Fuse is available anytime, anywhere and requires limited IT support.
Current Offering
Fuse offers the following features that enable users to organize, create, and deliver better and more measurable results for marketing efforts. These features allow the delivery of personalized messages to customers promptly to create an ongoing dialog that will result in more sales.
Organize and Create
Browser-based Workspaces organize users and give them access to the tools and assets needed to help print service providers and marketing departments work together.
The Asset Library gives users several ways to organize and interact with data, art, and documents.
The Lightbox is a richly featured layout tool that lets users create dynamic documents with data-driven information.
Control
Approval Workflows ensure that campaigns, documents, and artwork are moved through the approval cycle to control the message and the brand.
Cost Controls properly allocate the budget and offer co-marketing opportunities to partners.
Deliver
Print Networking lets marketing departments select a print vendor based on quality or location. Marketers can even use a dispersed network to minimize mailing expenses.
Postal Services provide address verification and presorting to save money.
Gain Insight
FuseUnite provides personalized URLs so that users can gather data on individuals and their preferences.
FuseUnite allows users to see those results in real time so they can instantly start assessing the success of any campaign.
Pricing
L2’s business model for its Fuse offering is an Application Service Provider model. There is a set-up fee, a monthly fee that includes a fixed number of transactions, and a click charge once the pre-specified number of transactions is exceeded.
The Fuse ASP is available in three levels: Professional, Business, and Enterprise Editions.
Fuse Professional Edition is available for $500 per month with a $5,000 one-time set-up fee for 5 users.
Fuse Professional features a Fuse Lightbox (a powerful document editing/layout tool for designing and editing documents online), Fuse Asset Library for storing documents and digital assets, Fuse Mail, Fuse On-demand, and a custom branded site. Typically, 5000 clicks per month included are included. Clicks beyond this level are billed at $.03 per transaction.
Fuse Business Edition covers 50 user accounts and adds Fuse Approve, Fuse Cost Control, and Fuse Connect. Fuse Business Edition is available for $1,000 per month with a $10,000 one-time set-up fee.
10,000 clicks per month are typically included. Clicks beyond this level are billed at $.03 per transaction.
Fuse Enterprise Edition provides the enterprise with a scalable and full feature package including Fuse AssetSync, Fuse Approve, Fuse Cost Control, Fuse Connect, and Fuse Works all in a branded Web site with unlimited user accounts. Fuse Enterprise is available for $2,000 per month with a $20,000 one-time set-up fee. 20,000 clicks per month are typically included. Clicks beyond this level are billed at $.03 per transaction.
Although L2 doesn’t pursue the “on-premises” model, they do have a few customers—like the U.S. Post Office—with which they have engaged in custom implementation projects. The U.S. Post Office project was a four month implementation project done at a fixed fee. The Web site (www.mailingonline.com) was created using the USPS design, but L2’s technology is behind it. Even with these enterprise installations (non-hosted installations), L2 still manages the software for their customers.
Training, Installation, and Support
Training and installation costs are included in the set up fees, unless the customer desires on-site or large group training.
The company reports that only 4 hours of training are necessary to get the project manager up and running.
Training an average user takes very little time, due in part to the intuitiveness of the user interface.
Although it only takes 4 hours to get the average administrator up to speed, the company also has a comprehensive number of training courses and programs for more advanced system use. These programs include group training on-site, Webex, classroom training at L2, and / or any combination of these trainings. L2 offers document-based, classroom, on-site, and Web-ex training. These services bill out at
$1,000 per day.
Customers & Users
L2 services print channel partners as well as enterprise clients. Channel partners tend to be large
commercial printers, direct mail houses, and ad agencies. They include firms like The Mahoney Company, Magjak, Palmer Printing Inc., and InfoImage. These print channel partners service hundreds of customers.
Corporations using Fuse include: Autodesk, Hewlett-Packard, Hyperion, Intel, Reed Exhibitions, The United States Post Office, health care providers, credit card companies, and national retail chains.
Competitors
L2 competes with Pageflex and XMPie. Additionally, there is competition from in-house developers that attempt to build the software themselves.
Contact Information L2 Inc.
http://www.l2soft.com 1023 Corporation Way Palo Alto, CA 94303 Phone: 650-944-8571 Fax: 650-887-2226
LeadGenesys Executive Summary
LeadGenesys offers a Web-based solution and consulting services to organizations struggling to optimize integrated B2B lead efforts. LeadGenesys optimizes the top of the B2B sales funnel, where 9 out of 10 leads are typically discarded. This solution works in conjunction with existing SFA/CRM systems and automates rules-based lead cultivation. Marketing ROI is continuously enhanced via real-time metrics on lead quality and unique insight into lead cultivation productivity.
Using a combination of hosted, turnkey, and outsourced telemarketing, LeadGenesys is in a position to provide product-related services as well as campaign design, management, and execution.
The highly customizable solution enables companies like Google, Fair Isaac, Fairchild Semiconductor, and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business to accelerate the B2B sales cycle. The ROI-driven solution tracks and shares real-time actionable response data with the sales team and gives marketing personnel the detailed metrics needed to assess campaign tool effectiveness and consistently boost lead quality. As a complementary front-end to SFA, MPM, and CRM applications, the solution flexibly supports in-house and outsourced lead generation activities so those efforts can be optimized without having to scrap or painfully customize MPM/SFA/CRM applications. LeadGenesys is a privately-held company that is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Target Audience
LeadGenesys is targeted toward ad agencies and B2B companies engaged in the financial services, banking, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications, utilities, high-tech, and automotive industries.
LeadGenesys is Best Suited to B2B Companies with a Long Sales Cycle
LeadGenesys strives to be known as “The company that optimizes the top of the sales funnel — the front end for Salesforce.Com or Oracle.” The company is very direct-marketing-oriented, and this is reflected in its dashboard report screens and extensive analytic tools.
Throwing a lot of qualified leads into the sales funnel is no longer a viable method of selling.
LeadGenesys primarily focuses on B2B-only companies with long sales cycles that need to be shortened,
LeadGenesys primarily focuses on B2B-only companies with long sales cycles that need to be shortened,