Vistaprint 2011 Annual Report Download - page 16

Form 10-K
print many high quality customized orders using a fraction of the labor of typical traditional printers.
Our quality control systems are designed around the principles of world-class manufacturing to ensure
that we consistently deliver high quality products.
Sales and Marketing
We have developed expertise in direct marketing to target new customers across various
channels and to drive more traffic to our websites, as well as to retain existing customers.
To acquire new customers, we employ sophisticated direct marketing technologies and
management practices using the Internet, e-mail, and traditional direct marketing mailings. Through
channels such as our own permission-based outbound emails and direct URL type-in, we are able to
secure orders at relatively low cost. In addition, many of the products that we offer our customers
contain the Vistaprint logo and reference our website. Our products, by their nature, are purchased by
our customers for the purpose of being further distributed to business or personal contacts. As such,
the appearance of our brand on the products yields broad and ongoing distribution and visibility of our
brand and presents the opportunity for beneficial viral and word-of-mouth advertising. We have also
run television broadcast campaigns in the United States and have tested this channel in other
markets.
We have developed tools and techniques for measuring the result of each provider of direct
marketing services and of each marketing message or product or service offer. In addition, our
customer split-run testing technology allows us to divide prospective or returning customers visiting
our websites into sub-groups that are presented with different product and service selections, prices
and/or marketing messages. This allows us to test or introduce new products and services on a
limited basis, test various price points on products and services or test different marketing messages
related to product or service offerings.
We place advertisements on the websites of companies such as eBay and Amazon, contract
for targeted e-mail marketing services from vendors such as MyPoints, and contract for placement on
leading search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!. We maintain affiliate programs with
companies under which we permit program members to include hyperlinks to our websites on their
sites and in promotional materials and we pay program members for sales generated through those
links.
We have also entered into a variety of strategic partnerships that facilitate access to customers
that would be difficult to reach through traditional direct marketing channels. We focus on cultivating
opportunities with strategic importance in the micro business marketplace and seek to partner with
companies that have large numbers of well established micro business customer relationships.
For example, we have developed a scalable capability to address the market of customers who
choose to order customized products and services through retail and online properties of office
superstores, retailers and copy storefronts, through strategic partnerships with third parties and we
have also entered into strategic partnerships with online and software vendors to small businesses.
We believe we are positioned to develop additional relationships in similar markets.
In addition, we create co-branded versions of our websites and web landing pages for
companies in a variety of industries, such as franchised organizations seeking brand consistency. In
general, these arrangements involve payment of a commission or revenue share to these companies
for sales of our products and services generated through these websites and web pages.
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