ClickZ: Forefield Case Study: When Traffic Is the Goal

Traffic to the FMA Advisor site means subscribers are accessing valuable content. If they don't visit, they won't see that content and aren't taking full advantage of the service. If they aren't getting the most out of FMA Advisor, they're less likely to renew their subscription. That would result in lower company revenues.

In the past, Forefield posted alerts on the site's page. You can see the problem — without a reminder or alert sent directly to users, they're less likely to log on. A typical Forefield subscriber visited twice monthly. By then, an alert could be out of date.

So Forefield turned to e-mail [alerts using email vendor Boldfish].

Forefield has seen an overall increase of 88.7 percent in FMA Advisor use since it began e-mail alerts.

Product usage (e.g., individuals who log onto the site and check out the FMA Advisor) has increased dramatically immediately following e-mail alerts — typically 200-250 percent.

Forefield's two largest customers have renewed their contracts, and both have increased in value. Each company has more employees using FMA Advisor, so each pays more.

For the record, Robert Loch and I also contribute to The End of Free, a web site dedicated to paid content models.