In 2011, SafetySmart re-launched with a savvy Web platform that had online tools to save customers time and effort. John Doyle, Senior Vice President of Products and Content at parent company Bongarde, spoke with us about how moving to more interactive content services increased subscriptions by 200%, how low-priced items through sister sites have been an enormously productive source of lead generation, and how the company’s sophisticated in-house sales system incorporates user-generated information and telesales. Plus, check out the best use of a call-to-action button on a site tour we’ve ever seen.
Company Profile
Founded: Online in 1999, re-launched in 2011. Parent company Bongarde founded in 1990.
No. of Publications: 6
Employees: 50 full-time, plus dozens of contractors
Business Model: Subscription only
Paying Subscribers: 20,000 users (see Target Market for more details)
Location: Seattle, WA and Penticton, British Columbia (Canada); smaller offices in Greenwich, CT and some virtual offices around U.S. and Canada.
Websites: www.safetysmart.com
compliance.safetysmart.com
www.ohsinsider.com
www.safetyposter.com
www.safetyworld.com
www.safetyxchange.org (free)
www.bongarde.com (company site)
Target Market
SafetySmart’s target market for individual subscribers consists of U.S. and Canadian safety directors and safety managers looking for training materials or compliance solutions for their company in order to obey changing safety laws in Canada and the U.S.
Its target market for group sales consists of insurance companies and consultants trying to create safety compliance programs for their clients. Each of these buyers then signs up their employees or clients with individual accounts. Therefore, SafetySmart has 20,000 users, but fewer buyers (or account holders). Some of these are site license deals, but some of the buyers simply act as brokers or retailers, selling clients individual accounts at a mark-up.
Content
SafetySmart covers more than 250 topics in safety compliance, from chemical safety to food safety to how to handle alcohol abuse and workplace bullying.
Originally the site simply published its print content online, which included:
- Complete training programs
- Professionally-prepared, ready-to-use safety training presentations (video + ppt)
- Articles
- Images and clip art (which are very popular with managers creating safety programs!)
- Puzzles and games
In 2011, the site re-launched with more management tools that made it possible for safety managers to conduct online education for employees. The site also enabled managers to log safety incidents and “close calls” (e.g., an unmarked wet floor is found before a slip or injury), generate regulatory forms, and take corrective action, saving time and ensuring compliance with laws.
The time/effort convenience is SafetySmart’s biggest selling point. Often companies don’t have the staff or budget to research and create training programs (or update them in a timely manner when laws change). Even larger companies that do have the time and staff have limited bandwidth to manage all safety compliance and training activities across an entire organization. SafetySmart lets companies focus on tracking and execution instead of research and content creation.
In addition, SafetySmart is able to get user-generated market research that tells them what types of training and compliance materials are being utilized most. The site then leverages this information in email newsletters and editorial decisions in order to help users engage more regularly with the platform.
SafetySmart has about 15 writers and editors working on content. Doyle credits the staff with its flexibility as the site shifted from an article-oriented library to an interactive Web platform: “Content development changed significantly; where we used to produce independent 500-word articles or training on a monthly cycle, we shifted to daily publishing in more formats, with additional expectations to incorporate links between content and other SEO tactics. There’s a lot more tools to help people do this work, but you have to know what those tools are – like plugins that simplify tagging and SEO or deliver content to multiple devices.”
The site uses a third party for Web development, and can have anywhere from four to ten developers working on a project at any given time. Doyle advises other sites “to hire product managers or lead engineers with solid technical skills and a commercial focus — one or the other alone makes it a tough go.”
Revenue Streams
SafetySmart keeps its revenue figures private, but Doyle did reveal that since the re-launch, the site achieved a 200% increase in subscription revenues last year from new business, basically tripling their revenues.
All revenues come from subscriptions,* and SafetySmart has three pricing plans:
- Professional at $99/month: Allows for 2 site administrators to moderate content and share with 100 employees.
- Premium at $199/month: Unlimited administrators with 100 employees. This plan also has customizable forms and training modules.
- Enterprise, which is a variable site licensing deal, but usually allows for unlimited administrators and 500 or more employees.
The Professional and Premium plans are sometimes sold to consultants and insurance companies who then re-sell the individual accounts to their clients at mark-up. Sometimes these re-sellers get a bulk discount at variable pricing.
*Note: SafetySmart’s sister sites sell other products in addition to subscriptions. We discuss those in more detail in Marketing Tactics.
Enterprise plans account for 65-75% of company revenues. However, most of those accounts didn’t start out as Enterprise accounts. “Many of our biggest customers began by buying a poster [at www.safetyposter.com] or monthly newsletter from us,” says Doyle. First-time subscribers usually choose a Premium plan, and then migrate to Enterprise over time.
The site has conducted some pricing tests on the lower-priced subscriptions and found that “people are not as sensitive” to pricing as they expected. The site didn’t see much difference in take-rates whether the price went up or down.
Marketing Tactics
SafetySmart generates high levels of lead generation through three methods:
- Offering low-priced items on sister sites, namely www.ohsinsider.com, www.safetyposter.com, www.safetyworld.com, www.safetyxchange.org, such as posters and other one-off sales.
- Offering a free newsletter from SafetySmart
- Offering a free, 2-week, full-access trial to SafetySmart, where prospects can access training materials and articles, invite other users, track incidents, and conduct most types of online employee training. The site does not take a credit card during sign-up. While this goes against best practices, this is the one exception we think makes sense since the managers trying out the product are unlikely to have immediate authorization to expense their subscription; requesting a credit card would only hurt the site’s conversion rate with no perceptible uptick in qualified leads. Also the company has a strong in-house sales team (more below).
Conversion tactics for the free offer include a homepage designed to maximize lead gen (below) and a site tour with a call-to-action button permanently available at the bottom of the screen (which we think is a great tactic — see the screenshot below).
All of the leads are then marketed to through two primary methods:
- Email marketing. Bongarde has decent in-house lists compiled from all its customers over its various sister sites. The site also has a welcome email series for trial takers, beginning with the email below that details the prospects username, password, how long the trial will last (to the second!), and how they can get other people in their company to join their account.
- Major in-house telesales operation. Often, the company’s customer service reps will introduce existing customers of sister sites to SafetySmart via the phone or email. Trial-takers are required to enter a phone number, and phone calls serve as SafetySmart’s best conversion tactic for getting paying users. These calls use a structured sales process aimed at identifying a prospect’s specific need “versus ending up in long dog-and-pony shows.” In addition, the site tracks how free trial takers are using the site, and the in-house sales team uses this information while on calls.
Often, the sales reps will convert customers to a Premium or Professional subscription and then continue to attempt to convert smaller subscription packages into Enterprise accounts. The in-house sales force numbers around 30 people.
Retention Tactics
Doyle says the average account lifetime is four to five years. Annual renewal rates are consistently between 80-90%. Doyle said first-time customers renew in the 70% neighborhood, but customers on the Enterprise plan renew at or above 90%, which is a solid – not outrageous – retention rate for group subscriptions, according to Subscription Site Insider’s Retention Handbook. SafetySmart has a renewal series both by email and the phone.
The retention model also hinges on “laying the groundwork for renewal”, with a structured engagement process that ensures customers are trained on the platform, using it, and achieving their goals. If a person/company hasn’t been using the site and is closing in on a renewal date, account managers will often focus significant energy on getting an inactive subscriber to use the site before addressing the renewal.
About John Doyle
John Doyle began his career in B2B information publishing soon after college at a financial research company called Greenwich Associates. After a number of years at Greenwich, he attended MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He then began working for Greenhaven Partners, a company that buys and optimizes existing information publishers. Through the company, Doyle worked for Pyramid Research, which was sold in 2008, and now Bongarde.
Doyle says the best part of his job is that he learns a lot everyday: “No one really has this stuff figured out. You gotta move fast these days.” He especially likes being in a business where one can test and experiment with how to commercialize and sell a product.
Vendors & Technology
Hosting — Amazon and Rackspace
http://aws.amazon.com/
http://www.rackspace.com/
Payment processing — Moneris (Canada) and Authorize.net (U.S.)
http://www.moneris.com/
http://www.authorize.net/
Marketing automation — Pardot
http://www.pardot.com
Ecommerce with Associated Email Services — Interspire
http://www.interspire.com/
Email Service Provider — AWeber
https://www.aweber.com
Content management — WordPress and custom platform.
http://wordpress.org/
CRM- Salesforce.com
https://www.salesforce.com/
Subscription Site Insider Analysis
We commend SafetySmart for having the courage to rethink its strategy online. By doing so, it has created a subscription site that harnesses the power of online media (i.e., fast data processing, interactivity, and user-generated and customizable content) to increase its subscriber base significantly. We also like that the site is able to do this while employing tried and true marketing tactics like telesales and email blasts.
We definitely think the site should augment its SEO and include some more PPC in their marketing campaigns. Bongarde might want to consider getting off Authorize.net since it’s likely not giving them the sophistication they need to process monthly billing. With their size and growth, the company may want to go direct to a payment processor instead of gateway — it will save them money and help them reduce churn.
