Chegg 2013 Annual Report Download - page 54

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•Infrastructure. Our technology resides at a major cloud-hosting provider divided between two U.S.
regions (East Coast/West Coast). We use one region for our test/development/stage/failover
environment and the other for our production environment. We are in the process of building the means
to spread our production environment across three U.S. regions. The architecture is also designed to
provide for international expansion if we expand into new international markets.
•Network Security. Our platform includes encryption, antivirus, firewall and patch-management
technologies to help protect our systems distributed across cloud-hosting providers and our business
offices.
•Internal Management Systems. We rely on third-party technology solutions and products as well as
internally developed and proprietary systems, in which we have made substantial investment, to
provide rapid, high-quality customer service, internal communication, software development,
deployment and maintenance.
Customers
In 2013, approximately 2.4 million individuals paid for our services directed at college students up from
approximately 2.0 million in 2012 and 1.5 million in 2011. We currently provide enrollment marketing services
to approximately 875 colleges, including public colleges and private colleges. We have conducted national
campaigns with a number of brands attractive to college students. During 2013, we had advertising contracts with
approximately 30 consumer brands.
Sales and Marketing
Students
We use several major direct marketing channels relevant to students. We deploy search engine optimization,
or SEO, techniques designed to increase the visibility of Chegg.com content in organic, unpaid search engine
result listings. We supplement our SEO efforts through search engine marketing using keyword simulation and
bid management tools to analyze and categorize search keywords, optimize bidding, increase impressions and
drive conversion. We also use display marketing to drive awareness of our brand and services by running display
ads on major online and mobile advertising networks, such as Google Display Network. We integrate our
textbook services on affiliates’ websites and work with a large ad network that recruits individual online affiliates
in exchange for pre-determined revenue share or commissions. We utilize three types of email marketing
campaigns: onboarding programs to drive activation and retention, personalized cross-sell campaigns to deepen
engagement and promotional campaigns to drive sales and interests. We use social media to manage organic and
paid programs across top websites, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We also acquire and engage
students through content generated by student bloggers, syndicated through partners, around key student
concerns and interests such as admissions, resume preparation, transition to college and picking a major.
Through our campus activation programs, we partner with brands to bring entertainment events, such as
concerts, trial promotions, on campus ambassadors and product giveaways to students. We also engage students
on campus to help them elevate their voice behind timely social issues beyond academics, such as the Student
Voice campaign tied to the 2012 presidential election. The Chegg for Good program connects students and
employees with partners to engage them in causes related to education and the environment. We work with the
nonprofit conservation organization American Forest to plant trees around the world and our funding has enabled
the planting of more than five million trees to date. In May 2013, we formed the Chegg Foundation, a California
nonprofit public benefit corporation, to engage in charitable and education-related activities. We intend to fund
the Chegg Foundation with one percent of the net proceeds from our initial public offering (IPO) that was
completed in November 2013. As part of our College Admissions and Scholarship Services marketing efforts, we
identify select partner organizations who offer complementary content and services that support students in
exploring colleges. We enable these partner organizations to use our college match service through their websites
to enable students to request information about colleges of interest.
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