COMPULIFE®
Software Inc.
(800) 798-3488
COMPULIFE®
Software Inc.
(800) 798-3488
This month's bulletin is a "must read" because it sets forth a series of VERY important changes that Compulife will be making to our product, infrastructure and marketing plans for the next year. Some of these changes will have a direct impact/benefit for you, and we hope you do not miss the important opportunities that we are offering to our subscribers and future subscribers.
Here is a quick run-down on the upcoming changes:
Price Cuts for Software (agents now pay only $149 / year)
Top Up Opportunity (take immediate advantage of the new price)
Downsizing/Improvements to Compulife's Infrastructure
New Software Product - Critical Illness Analyzer (CIA)
New Rules for Sub-user discounts
These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this
bulletin. We would encourage you to read on.
Effective immediately Compulife is cutting the price for the Personal Use Edition of the Compulife program from $199 to $149 per year!
With this reduction in price, we are eliminating the Term4Sale Agent Edition of our software which was priced at $99 per year. Those who have been receiving the Term4Sale Agent Edition will be automatically upgraded to the Personal Use edition at NO CHARGE!
There are those who recently paid higher annual subscription fees. While Compulife is not offering refunds, here's some GREAT NEWS:
Compulife will give existing subscribers until August 31st to take advantage of the new pricing in order to "Top Up" their subscription. "Top Up" means paying additional funds to extend your current subscription to a full one, two or three years based upon the new lower prices.
IMPORTANT: Consideration will be given for the time left on your current subscription based upon the higher price you paid.
Here are some examples of how this will work:
1. Let's assume that two months ago you paid $199 for a one year
subscription. If you are willing to top up your one year subscription
to a two year subscription, here is what it will cost:
We will assume that you have $165 left on your current subscription
(10/12's of $199). The new price for a two year subscription is $249.
Substract $165 from $249 for a total of $84. In this example, if you
pay $84 the subscription is extended to 24 months. At the same time,
you can pay another $100 and add 12 more months for a total of 36
months.
2. Assume eight months ago you paid $199 for a one year subscription.
If you are willing to top up your one year subscription to a new one
year subscription, here is what it will cost:
We will assume you have $66 left on your current subscription (4/12's
of $199). The new price for a one year subscription is $149.
Substract $66 from $149 for a total of $83. In this example, if you
pay $83 you would extend your subscription to 12 months. Alternately,
you could add one of two more years for an additional $100 per year.
3. Assume six months ago you paid $349 for a two year subscription.
If you are willing to top up your two year subscription to a new three
year subscription, here is what it will cost:
We will assume that you have $261 left on your current subscription
(18/24's of $349). The new price for a three year subscription is
$349. Substract $261 from $349 for a total of $88. For $88 you extend
your current 18 month subscription to a 36 month subscription.
NOTE: Any subscriber who has more than $349 left on a subscription,
based upon the above calculations, will (upon request) receive a pro-
rated subscription based upon the new pricing schedule.
VERY IMPORTANT: The top up opportunity exists until August 31st. You must act to take advantage of the opportunity. If you fail to act, and miss the August 31st deadline, there is no further consideration given.
One of the reasons for Compulife's ability to begin to roll down prices are the changes that we have and will be making to our infrastructure. As you know, we have been aggressively moving our customers away from obtaining updates by disk to obtaining updates by Internet. Apart from saving the cost of mailing and handling disks, shipping disks required sufficient numbers of staff and adequate office space.
Over the past two years we have gradually cut the number of our staff and we are now ready to start cutting office space. We expect that both the U.S. and Canadian offices will move in the next year. The Canadian address will be the first to change. Our new quarters will be less expensive and we are passing those cost savings on to you. Once again, expect to see an address change in the next few months.
We have also designed and are in the process of developing a new Internet Delivery system for your subscription renewals. At this point, once you have paid for your subscription renewal, Compulife ships you a CD which you install on your computer and which permits your computer to obtain monthly updates by Internet for the balance of your subscription period. Sometime later this summer or early fall we will switch over to delivering your subscription renewal via our web site.
Once you have paid for your subscription, as you do now, we will e-mail you a link to a password protected web page. Once you have accessed that web page, you will be able to run a "setup.exe" program right from the Internet. This will be very similar to the program that you now see when you install the CD but this is better. Currently, after running the CD, you must go and get the current monthly update. With the introduction of the new Internet "setup.exe" software, the monthly update will be installed at the same time, turning the old two step process into a simpler one step process.
Even better, this password protected way of downloading your subscription and monthly update will be available throughout your subscription. If you purchase a new computer, and need to install, you can go back and do it later.
This is a big advantage because subscribers routinely lose their CDs. If that happens, we need to ship another CD. With this new system, if you accidentally delete the e-mail which contained your link and password, you will be able to call us. With a single click from inside our subscriber database we will be able to instantly ship you a replacement e-mail with the link and your password.
Needless to say, this new internet subscription renewal delivery system will further cut our costs. We will not have to purchase, prepare, handle and mail CD's. Cost reductions like these have put us in a position to lower prices for software.
Compulife is replacing our "Take the $5 Challenge" marketing program with a new program called take the "Dare to Compare" Challenge. The new marketing program is focused on daring agents to try using our software to compare insurance and see what impact it has on their insurance sales. In order to give them sufficient time to see the impact of our software on their sales, we are offering trial users the opportunity to extend their 30 day free trial to a FREE 4 month Personal Use subscription.
You can read more about this offer by going to:
Some will say, "Well that's not fair, I never got 3 free months of service".
Here's how you can earn important $10 credit coupons that you can use to pay for up to a full year of Compulife when you renew.
If you refer a prospect to Compulife, and that prospective user completes the "Dare to Compare" challenge, Compulife will give your prospect a FREE 4 month subscription and send you a credit coupon for $10.
IMPORTANT: It doesn't matter if the prospect buys or doesn't buy the software. They just have to do the "Dare to Compare" tutorial and e- mail Compulife a quote.
Think about this! For your referral to get their FREE 4 months, they need to do a simple 5 minute tutorial. If they do that 5 minute tutorial, you will get a $10 credit coupon which you can use against your next subscription purchase.
The tutorial is a 5 minute exercise where the prospect e-mails or faxes us a Pick 6 Policy Analysis.
To make a referral:
 |
Click Here to e-mail your referral to Compulife |
Make sure you identify your referral's name and location, and make sure we
have your name, address and phone number.
If your referral completes the "Dare to Compare" challenge by the end of
30 days, they will receive a CD with a 3 month free subscription (in
addition to their original 30 day trial). At the time that we are
shipping the CD, we will check to see if they were referred. If they
were, you will get a credit coupon for $10.
If you order 20 trials for other agents, and 5 of those trials do the $10 challenge, you will get 5 - $10 coupons which will give you $50 to use as a credit against your next subscription to Compulife. Credit coupons can be submitted with payment of any new subscription. Coupons are issued in the name of the referring subscribers and are not transferrable; meaning they can only be used by those to whom they are issued.
The only conditions attached to trials is that the person you are referring to Compulife must be a life insurance agent and must not have been a subscriber to Compulife in the past 3 years or have had a trial in the past 3 years.
REMEMBER: There is NO LIMIT to the number of names that you can provide, or the credit coupons that we issue to you.
Because trials are shipped by e-mail, there is very little cost for Compulife providing trials. Therefore, if you send us a list of 200 agents, and we ship 200 trials, and only 2 or 3 actually use the trial and complete the tutorial to get their 4 FREE months of software - we don't care. For your part, you will still have earned $20 or $30 for the effort.
Let's review how hard it is for you to earn $10. You need to e-mail us the name, address and e-mail address of a fellow agent who does not use Compulife. Make sure you provide us with your name and address, and make sure the subject line has "30 day free trial" or "Dare to Compare" in it.
We will send the 30 day trial to your referral and a copy of the "Dare to Compare" offer for 3 more months of FREE software. If they take the challenge to get the additional 3 months of software, you get a coupon for $10.
Feel free to add the trial request to your web site, and automate the e-mail order process to Compulife.
One of Compulife's authorized web providers, Insurance Squared , is matching our dare to compare program with 4 free months of on-line comparisons for web sites. Of greater importance to existing subscribers, Insurance Squared is now offering FREE on-line quotes in exchange for a promotional link back to Insurance Squared. CLICK HERE to read more about that offer.
Compulife will be using the summer months to develop a new software product called "Critical Illness Analyzer" (CIA) which we will introduce this fall. The program will be a separate software product from our existing life insurance comparison software. Having noted that, you will be able to import client data from the Compulife Quotation System with a single button on the client entry window of CIA.
IMPORTANT: The CIA program will be provided to all Compulife subscribers at NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE.
While CIA will permit price comparisons, the focus of this new program will be to allow you to compare coverages and policy wordings for the various CI products in the market. Here's how that will work:
Having entered the client information, you will click a "Compare Now: button that will immediately display a number of CI products and prices for the category selected (not unlike the Display Product comparison you get now in the Compulife Quotation System).
When you double click on any product in the comparison, an individual product window will display and this will be different. In addition to the initial premium, you will get an abreviated list of coverages included within that policy. Double clicking on any one of those coverages will bring up the policy wording for that coverage. Clicking another "Compare Now" button on the policy wording page, will display the policy wording for all other policies which offer the same/similar coverage. This will allow you to compare the contract wording for that coverage with all the other products in that comparison.
While we are still in the design/development stage, we would like to hear from subscribers who have suggestions or ideas that they would like to see implemented in Complife's new CIA program. Feel free to call and discuss that with Bob Barney at 800-798-3488.
We plan to post the August 2005 Internet monthly update to our six monthly update web sites on Friday, July 29th.
The disk update will be processed Friday, July 29th and the disks will be shipped on that day. You should have the disk update by Monday, August 1st.
With the reduction of price for our Personal Use subscription, from $199 to $149, Compulife is eliminating sub-user discounts for this product with the following exceptions:
1. Sub-user discounts for Personal Use Editions of Compulife are available to Standard Licensees (agencies) ONLY.
2. Sub-user discounts are only available for 10 or more units.
3. The price for sub-user editions of the Personal Use software will be $99 per year (minimum commitment of $990 per year).
4. Sub-user purchasers who buy 15 or more units, will have the option of custom hosted updates. This means the agency can determine which companies are included in their sub-user's systems.
Last month we advised Compulife subscribers that their opportunity to extend their disk update subscription at the old prices would be gone on July 1st. We are extending that deadline until July 10th to ensure that everyone has had one final chance to take advantage of the old prices should they need to continue getting disk updates.
Here is what we told you last month:
There remains a minority of Compulife subscribers who still get disk updates rather than Internet updates.
During April Compulife removed the opportunity for NEW subscribers to purchase updates on disks. The only disks we are now shipping are those to existing subscribers who still get their updates by disks.
However, effective July 1, 2005, EXISTING customers will be faced with higher prices and new conditions when they renew their subscription for updates on disks. If you are getting disk updates, and want to hold off on switching to updates by Internet, you need to read this carefully.
First, renewal prices for disks will increase. To ensure that all disk update customers stop receiving disk updates after December 2006, all disk update customers renewing after July 1, 2005 will be invoiced for the total number of months left to December 2006. This will ensure that each disk subscription is paid to the end of 2006. It will not be renewed past that point as a disk subscription.
From July 1, 2005 forward, personal use disk subscription renewals will be priced at $29 per month, payable in a lump sum to the end of December 2006.
Agency use disk subscriptions will be $39 per month, payable in a lump sum in advance to the end of December 2006.
VERY IMPORTANT: The absolute last date anyone will be able to obtain a monthly update by disk will be December 2006. From January 2007 and forward, ALL Compulife subscribers will need to receive updates by Internet. If you are not connected to the Internet by January 2007, you will no longer be able to get Compulife updates.
PAY ATTENTION TO THIS!
If you act before July 1, 2005 (NOW JULY 10, 2005), the cost of your renewal will be based upon the total number of months left times the average cost per month based upon the current annual fees of:
Personal Use - $25 per month (rather than $29)
Agency Use - $33.25 per month (rather than $39)
If you wait until AFTER July 1, 2005 (NOW JULY 10, 2005) to renew disk updates, you will pay the higher prices.
Last month we told you about rule changes for how many FREE listings each subscriber is allowed at the Term4Sale web site. This month we want to point out that Compulife has been making internal changes to the database that we use to track subscriber records. One of the changes is that are now integrating the zip code database listings into our main database of subscribers. Prior to this the zip code listings were kept in a separate database.
One of the results of this integration is the fact that a subscriber, who does not renew their subscription, will automatically be deleted from the listings at www.term4sale.ca. Prior to this we cross checked lists in November when we were invoicing paid listings for the following year. At that time we removed subscribers who had not renewed their software subscription. With the change that we have made, term4sale listings will be automatically deleted when the subscriber does not renew.
There is a negative implication as a result of this change. It affects those who have paid to be listed in additional zip codes at www.term4sale.com. When a subscription is not renewed, and the term4sale listings are removed, paid zip code listings are also removed. We need to clarify that if paid zip codes are deleted due to non-renewal of a subscription there is no refund for unused zip code listing fees.
If the subscriber subsequently renews their subscription, then their paid listings are automatically reactivated.
Last month we told you that you may now be eligible for two or three free listings, rather than just one, depending upon the type of subscription that you have.
Based upon the small number of requests for additional free listings, we assume most subscribers have not read the offer. Here it is again:
1. Term4Sale - Agent edition
An individual subscribing to the lowest cost version of Compulife will continue to be entitled to one free listing at www.term4sale.com. There is no change for Term4Sale subscribers.
2. Personal Use subscription
An individual agent subscribing to the full version of the Compulife Quotation System will now be entitled to have two free listings at www.term4sale.com. Prior to this change, the maximum number of free listings was one.
3. Agency Use subscription (Standard License)
Agency subscribers are now entitled to have up to three free listings at www.term4sale.com. Prior to this change, the maximum number of free listings was one. NOTE: There will still be the requirement that a single individual be listed as the contact person for the agency.
Free listings that are within a local phone call of the agent will be treated as "Home" zip codes. Home zip codes are given priority over those purchasing additional zip code listings. Home zip code rules are unchanged and explained in detail at the www.term4sale.com web site following the lists of three agents which are provided to consumers.
If you are a personal use or agency subscriber, and already have one free listing at www.term4sale.com, please send Diane an e-mail at dwelch@compulife.com indicating which other zip codes you would like to add. Alternately, you can give Diane a call at 800-798-3488. Please keep in mind that new listings requested during June will be posted on July 1st.
The July monthly update of Compulife no longer provides the DOS program. If you attempt to run the GO.EXE file your system will automatically transfer to the Windows program. While we have been warning about this for several months, we suspect that there will be those who do not read our bulletins and who will be somewhat upset by this development. We do have a temporary work around, but you will need to call for assistance.
More important, you need to learn the Windows version of the program. We think we have been very fair in continuing to offer the DOS program for as long as we have, and we hope that those who used and loved it, will make the effort to learn the Windows version. If there is something you used to do in DOS, that seems harder for you to do in Windows, call us. There is probably a short cut you aren't aware of.
Please keep in mind that part of the changes that we are making, such as reduced infrastructure and lower prices are directly tied to simplifying the way that we do business. Supporting an operating system that no one buying new software wants or is using, makes no sense.
For those who update by Internet, Compulife has gone to great lengths to provide you with redundancy in our web sites. Our main web site is:
However, we keep two other completely separate web sites, on two completely different servers, at:
Whatever we update to compulife.com, we are also updating to compulife.us and to compulife.cc. If one web site goes down, for whatever reason, either of the other two are ready to serve you. That includes both monthly and mid-month updates.
For those doing monthly updates by Internet, we rely on three other web sites to supply monthly updates. These are automatically checked and used by our automatic Internet update software.
For those receiving updates by disks, you are responsible to return those disks each month. Not returning disks can lead to the termination of your update service. For those not wanting to return disks there are two ways to eliminate the problem.
1. Switch to obtaining monthly updates by Internet.
Not only will you eliminate the expense and hassle of returning disks, you will save $100 per year in subscription fees.
To switch to Internet monthly updates, go to our web page www.compulife.com and select the last menu choice "Forms, applications, instruction tutorials, etc." Under the section "License Agreements" you will need to select and complete a new License Agreement for the type of license you have. After you have printed the new agreement, please read it, especially the part where you agree that you have successfully downloaded and processed our "mid-month updates". If you haven't done that before, call us and we'll be happy to step you through the procedure. It's easy.
2. Disk Purchase Program
The other way to avoid returning the disks and the disk box each month is to pre-purchase them for $21 per year ($1.75 per month). Once you do that you can keep them for future reference, throw them away or return them for a credit (once each year) when you are invoiced for the following year. $21 costs you less than mailing back disks each month.
