CLIENT: Newly launched e-commerce portal for financial professionals
CHALLENGE: Needed qualified traffic ASAP to national professional association’s organization’s multi-million dollar investment in the portal which had nearly 1,000 compliance guides, manuals and continuing professional education products to sell.
SOLUTION: We negotiated low-cost broad-right content licensing agreements with leading news, information and data providers. Negotiated for portal to sell content providers’ subscription offerings, software and services in lieu of cash. We also developed a suite of targeted e-newsletters whose headline articles drew from the Web site and account for more than 50% of its weekly traffic and 30% of e-commerce.
RESULT: Portal now profitable, with nearly 100 full-time employees. Cited as Internet Retailer Top 500 Web site with over 250,000 monthly unique visitors (representing 50% of all U.S. certified professionals in its niche). The niche newsletters, while developed as traffic driving mechanism, now reach more than 200,000 registered users of the Web site weekly and generate over $1 million annually in in-newsletter display advertising.