Flypaper announces Pro version and enterprise plans

By Mary A. C. Fallon Flypaper Studio, Inc. (DEMO 08) today introduces a subscription version of its interactive presentation application aimed at helping sales people and others produce Adobe Flash-based "stories" that track how viewers respond so creators can make changes if attention wanes, or contact a viewer if she indicates interest. Flypaper Pro cost $195 a year, and until Aug. 31 the company is reducing the subscription cost by $50. Flypaper Pro as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application is a prelude to the company's upcoming enterprise version, scheduled for September, which is expected to integrate with top customer relationship management (CRM) software. The 32-person Phoenix, AZ company was founded by an executive team whose experience includes developing ACT! and SalesLogix® CRM. Unlike the company's free, standard Flypaper application, Flypaper Pro has a reporting console, or dashboard, that tracks metrics such as who is viewing a story, how often it’s viewed, what pages are being looked at, and how long a viewer stays on a page. For a key target audience - sales people - Flypaper Studio CEO Pat Sullivan expects subscribers will be able to adjust their "stories" and sales strategy as they learn how viewers are receiving their messages. Besides a tracking mechanism, the professional version enables subscribers to include interactive forms and polls that encourage viewers to engage by providing contact information or product preferences - all to help sales people determine if a prospect's interest is warm or cool. "A Flypaper story feeds back how story is used - if it's copied and sent and where it's embedded," Sullivan said. "The interactive forms could ask people to rate products or indicate they want a sales person to call. All this type of information will be able to trigger something in a CRM application." Flypaper Pro allows subscribers to host their presentations on any Web site and still track user engagement. In the upcoming enterprise version, viewer data will integrate into CRM applications. An annual subscription provides users with as much as one gigabyte of hosted storage space for Flypaper stories, while users of the free application get as much as 100 MB of storage space. In addition, Flypaper stories can be made into digital video files (.flv and .mpg) so they can be loaded onto video-sharing or social network Web sites. Although Flypaper Studio sold its e-learning service business to the corporate training developer GMarie Group of Phoenix in June (the merger is effective July 23), it plans on working closely with GMarie and other e-learning companies interested in Flypaper Pro's ability to publish presentations as SCORM conformant training courses whose usage and interactions can be tracked by learning management systems. During the company's two beta versions this year, the software was downloaded more than 15,000 times and there is now a library of about 260 templates created by the company and users available at no cost. Sullivan said the company is developing deals with image libraries so users can buy images direct from Flypaper Studio's Web site. Sullivan said that the company is in the process of closing a Series B round of financing but declined to confirm the amount. In February it raised $3 million in a Series A round from Sierra Ventures of Menlo Park, CA, and SCF Arizona of Phoenix.