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Gulfstream Case Study Inforonics-Gulfstream:
A 5 year Partnership
By: Inforonics, LLC
 
The Companies:

Gulfstream Internet Group was founded in September 1999 with the mission to provide advertisers with unique Internet-based direct marketing and advertising solutions while providing consumers with a fun way to earn valuable rewards for participating in Gulfstream programs. Gulfstream regu­larly interacts with its inventory of over 10 million motivated, qualified consumers online. Over 10,000 new members join a Gulfstream site every day. The sites include: www.PhoneHog.com, www.MPFree.com, www.100Tunes.com, www.iPodSweepstakes.com, www.CellRewards.com and www.SatelliteSweeps.com

The incentives are offered to consumers through multiple websites via email programs and website “Personal Pages.” Individuals can join any of the Gulfstream sites for free and receive instant re­wards, accrue points toward rewards or enter sweepstakes by clicking sponsors’ links, visiting spon­sors’ sites, completing advertisers’ offers or purchasing goods and services from online partners. Gulfstream members have earned or won millions of dollars worth of free merchandise, including long distance and cell phone minutes, music downloads, Apple iPods and XM or Sirius satellite ra­dios. Industries utilizing the marketing effectiveness of Gulfstream and their sites range from finan­cial to healthcare to communications, among many others
 
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Inforonics helps its clients succeed with solutions to their business and technology challenges. In­foronics’ team of professionals deliver premium managed services and branded technical support to small to mid-sized businesses. Clients benefit from the company’s unique ability to create, deploy and support highly customizable, scalable and flexible services to meet changing business needs.

Inforonics offers branded, multi-tiered technical support - up to 24/7; device management and moni­toring solutions in its clients’ data centers or in their scalable, secure facility; custom application management and SaaS-enablement services. Based in Littleton, MA, Inforonics has been a privately-held company for over 40 years. For more information, visit www.inforonics.com.

Inforonics partnered with Gulfstream in February 2002. By combining application management and managed hosting expertise with direct marketing innovation, the two companies have fostered the evolution of Gulfstream from a single website to a group of sites with diverse appeal and a common mission that drives the growth in revenue year after year.

The Partnership - A Timeline of Events  
 
 
2002 – Gulfstream started with a membership rewards website called PhoneHog.com where members receive free long distance calling minutes for completing offers from advertisers. Initial analysis of the email application and the database used to drive PhoneHog.com uncovered a num­ber of issues affecting the performance of Gulfstream’s application.
 
One of the first projects initiated by Inforonics’ team of professionals was to perform an in-depth dis­covery of the PhoneHog application and database. This discovery was used to explore functionality down to the source code level, to determine the health and lifecycle phase of the PhoneHog ap­plication and database as well as provide information regarding what type and level of support was appropriate. At the time, the database was over-populated with outdated or suspect information that was affecting database performance.  
 
Inforonics engineers analyzed, then purged the database of all unnecessary information and estab­lished automated processes to perform maintenance operations on a regular basis lending stability to Gulfstream’s application.
 
2002 – After performing the “spring cleaning,” Inforonics experts began identifying the major inef­ficiencies in the code and the database. What Inforonics found was that when an individual user changed his or her preferences, contact information, etc., the change had to be made 40+ times to account for the different components of the PhoneHog website.  Since this process was redundant and extremely labor intensive, Inforonics application and database engineers methodically converted hundreds of instances of in-line SQL code into global stored procedures, optimizing the communica­tion between the PhoneHog site and the back-end database. This change led to further stability of the PhoneHog application and provided the firm foundation required for growth.
 
Gulfstream initially utilized a customized, “off-the-shelf” share-ware email application to send its of­fers to members. Gulfstream sends hundreds of thousands of emails to its members on a daily ba­sis and needed a solution that could handle the volume of emails and the database requirements to support the enormous quantity. As the list of members grew, it became clear that the mail applica-tion’s capabilities were limiting. Inforonics specialists were able to increase the capabilities of the application in order to accommodate PhoneHog’s expansion. Inforonics was also able to provide Gulfstream additional time in making decisions regarding adding servers and further upgrading the application while continuing operations under the current system.
 
2003 – As the stability of PhoneHog’s website increased, Inforonics was able to assist Gulfstream in setting up automated interface points with external vendors allowing access to information in the database. Each interface was unique and custom-built and allowed data to be shared between Gulf-stream and their advertisers, partners and vendors.

2004 – Following the success and stability of PhoneHog.com, Gulfstream was ready to launch a new site. MPFree.com was introduced as another member reward site. Subscribers to this site re­ceive free song downloads when they complete offers from advertisers. Inforonics built a second website, a second database and upgraded the email application to support the increased traffic from the new offering. During this time, new, and much more stringent SPAM regulations were enacted. Habeas Headers were added to email messages to ensure they would pass through large mail en­gines such as AOL®, Yahoo® and MSN®. Gulfstream added Bonded Sender to its inventory of de­livery tools and Inforonics technicians installed SenderID and SPF.

2005 – It was clear to Gulfstream that the Inforonics team of application managers not only had the application and its components streamlined, they also had the process of expansion mastered. With this confidence, they contracted for four future sites. The first to launch was iPodSweep-stakes.com. This site is different from PhoneHog and MPFree in that it is a sweepstakes site rather than a member reward program. Visitors are entered in a daily drawing to win an iPod when he or she clicks on a sponsor offer. Once again Inforonics designed a new site, created a new database and helped Gulfstream with an upgrade to a UNIX-based Mail Transfer Agent including database coding to ensure the email system would interact properly with the database.
 
2005– Also in 2005, Gulfstream outsourced the optimization of its landing pages. The optimiza­tion company provided analytics to Gulfstream indicating which pages and registration forms im­proved Gulfstream’s conversions. Gulfstream asked the Inforonics specialists to write a program that could provide these analytics, giving them essentially the same level of metrics, but eliminating the monthly costs. “Best Page” was created by the Inforonics team of developers and has been pro­viding Gulfstream with cost effective analytics for page 
 

2005 - 2006 Gulfstream and Inforonics launch SatelliteSweeps.com, CellRewards.com and 100Tunes.com. Additionally, Inforonics builds a Gulfstream corporate site and corporate email ap­plication.

Today – Inforonics continuously keeps Gulfstream apprised of technologies and best practices available to improve efficiencies crucial to growth with acceptable levels of risk. In 2006, Inforonics recommended an upgrade to Gulfstream’s MS SQL versions and a consolidation of its Web server and DB architecture, reducing the number of servers required and, thus, monthly managed hosting costs. Gulfstream approved the plan and purchase of new hardware, and Inforonics is currently working to transition Gulfstream and their sites into their new managed hosting environment. In­foronics’ formal release management processes help to streamline the volume of changes required to keep Gulfstream sites fresh and efficient but still on a brisk timeline.  

The Inforonics-Gulfstream partnership fosters growth by combining innovation with expertise. Gulf-stream is able to focus its internal resources on expanding its business while relying on Inforonics to manage the technical aspects of what makes them successful. Together, Inforonics and Gulfstream are able to provide consistent and stable offerings that continue to provide growth for each organiza­tion.
 
For more information call Inforonics at 978-698-7300, or you can email us at sales@inforonics.com