About "VCF Upload Widget" & "VCF Uploader Limited (VCFUL)"

Pain area for marketers. They invest a lot of money in creating world-class websites and populating them with well-produced whitepapers and other marketing collateral. When visitors wish to download them, marketers expect some ROI for their efforts, so ask visitors to complete lengthy registration forms to identify themselves, specify their interests and indicating their budgets and purchase timelines. While marketers are justified in seeking all this information that helps them qualify whether the visitor is a qualified lead or not, they also fear that in their zeal to collect it, they might totally lose the visitor as there is ample anecdotal evidence that suggests that most visitors abandon their surfing when faced with the labor of completing registration forms. One best practice suggested by many marketing services firms is to simplify registration forms so that they don't seek much more information than the name, email and country of the visitor. While this has definitely improved lead generation efficiencies at the point of website visits by potential buyers, it has only pushed the inevitable to a later stage when a marketer will definitely require additional information in order to qualify the lead and plan next steps.

VCFUL seeks to resolve this pain area by providing a new "VCF Uploader" widget to websites of sellers (say SAP.com). Sellers download code from VCFUL website (onetime activity), add it to their own websites (SAP.com in this case), after which their website sports the VCF Uploader widget displayed as a button. Visitors to seller's website simply click this VCF Uploader button, select their Visiting Card File (VCF) from their own PCs, and click another button to upload the VCF to the seller's website. That's it. The seller has obtained all required buyer contact information for progressing the lead without subjecting the potential buyer to a tedious process of completing lengthy registration forms.

When the potential buyer clicks the VCF Uploader button on the seller's website, the widget will create and forward to VCFUL the following material: (1) the VCF file which contains only the visitor's contact details and no information linking them to the specific website in which they clicked the button; and (2) context information (CINFO) like date, time and URL of the webpage from where the VCF file was uploaded (say, SAP.com/HR_solutions.htm). VCFUL will supply both the VCF and the CINFO to the seller i.e. owner of the website.  Ideally, VCFUL should have the rights to use both VCF and CINFO as it pleases, but that may not be practical, at least in the case of CINFO.

Benefits:

1. Sellers will see a higher conversion rate of visitor registration since VCFU functionality makes it possible for the seller to obtain rich information that is required to progress the lead without subjecting the potential buyer to the tedium of completing lengthy registration forms.

2. Potential buyers can leave behind their full contact details easily and context information automatically, thereby improving the quality of response they expect to receive from sellers.

Revenue Models:

1. In return for Benefit #1, VCFUL can charge a subscription fee ($$/month) to sellers for the VCF Uploader widget. OR, VCFUL could levy a small  charge (a few cents) for each VCF+CINFO file they supply to the seller. OR both. It might be easier to adopt a FREEMIUM model where the basic version of the widget (containing "Add This Widget" hyperlink in order to make the widget viral) is given away free and the subscription fee ($$$/year) is charged only for a premium version of the widget which does not contain this hyperlink. Additional features for the premium version could be SEO wrappers, premium analytics, etc. (cf. http://www.widgetbox.com/product/pro/?nogwbtn for details).

2. People (potential buyers and visitors of sellers' websites) will visit VCFUL website to create a VCF file of themselves in the rare case that they don't already have one. This traffic can be monetised via opt in for offers / newsletters from sellers, who are permitted to advertise on VCFUL's website for a fee.

3. The value of CINFO to the larger community is huge. It contains the insight that a VCF uploading potential buyer is interested in SAP's HR offering in this case. Imagine the value of this insight to competing HR vendors! But, SAP will not permit VCFUL to share this information with anyone else. How can this information be monetized?

Competition:

As of Mar. 2009, we could not find any offering / company resembling VCFUL. Of course, there are standard ID websites like OpenID, but we have not come across any of them being used in B2B situations.  Besides, VCFUL uses simple VCF files, which are fairly common and already being used (e.g. in the form of email signature) in the B2B world.