COMPULIFE ® Software Inc. 
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Update News
for November 2016
These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this bulletin. Term4Sale Bumping Week Begins If last year you took advantage of "BUMP WEEK" and moved your 3 local postal code listings into better postal codes, and BUMPED out paid listings, you can ignore what follows... UNLESS!!! You have a Standard License for Compulife ($300 per year). If you do, PAY ATTENTION!! This year, for the first time, we are letting standard license subscribers (paying the higher fee of $299 per year) purchase an additional 3 local postal codes and for for ONLY $12 each! Paid postal codes listings are normally $15 per year. If you miss this opportunity to increase your number of local postal codes, YOU MISS THAT OPPORTUNITY. By doubling from 3 to 6 local postal codes you will have 6 postal codes that you can use to BUMP people out of postal codes within 20 miles of you (in rural areas the circle can be bigger - call if that's you). Once again, the normal cost of a paid listing is $15 but you get the additional 3 local postal codes for only $12 each (payable as $1 per month for the balance of your current subscription). More important, they can be used to bump which you cannot do with paid postal code listings. $15 paid postal codes are sold on a first come, first serve basis and once you purchase and have a postal code, no one but a local agent, using their local postal code, could force you out. But that can only happen once a year. Once you purchase an additional postal code, it is yours for the calendar year. The local postal codes are tied to your subscription, and renewals on those are charged at the same time as your subscription. Additional paid postal codes are sold on a calendar year basis. Can a Personal Use subscriber UPGRADE to a Standard License and get the 3 additional local postal codes. YES YOU CAN. If you want to do that we look at how much time is left on your current subscription and charge you an upgrade fee of $12 per month for the balance of the subscription. $10 is the normal difference in annual price ($299 - $149) divided by 12 (rounded down). The three additional postal codes would be $3 per month on top of that. There are other advantages to the standard license, call if you want to discuss it. You should do that BEFORE November 7th. And if you are in an area where great postal codes are scarce, because the good ones are all full, the week of November 7th would be a great time to make a move and double up on local listings. And if you did NOT use the opportunity to BUMP postal codes last year, then you don't want to miss the opportunity to do so this year. Remember, everyone is still on the old pricing system and so your first 3 postal codes are included in the price of your Compulife Windows PC software. Next year, we will be breaking that price out separately so that those who don't want postal codes won't have to pay for them. And yes, people are making sales from term4sale. You can read about that here: NOT A MINUTE EARLIER Every year someone complains because someone else beat them to the punch. We have a HARD starting date and time to ensure that this is FAIR for everyone, and no one can complain if someone else beat them to it. IMPORTANT: Do not call or email with postal code change instructions before 9:00 AM EST on November 7th. If you do, your email will be ignored. If you call early you will be told to call later. Because the phone lines will likely be busy that day, and a lot of the early part of that week, it is BEST to do your homework in advance and email your instructions for changes. If you are switching postal codes for better postal codes, we need specific instructions. Tell us what postal code you are giving up and which postal code you want in its place. If you don't know what postal codes you have, email and ask for a list of those postal codes ASAP. You can research postal codes at: If you see a postal code that you want, and it's full and within 20 miles of your physical location, go to the home page of www.term4sale.ca, and check the listing to see who is in it. Put in the postal code, run a quote, then click the "Select and Continue" button to see if any of the agents in that postal code are displaying a toll free number. Either a toll free number, or what appears to be a non-local phone number, is a pretty good clue that that agent is probably buying that listing. If that is the case then that agent can be bumped. We'll make the final check but you should assume you can get it if you want it; just email us those instructions. If you are a Standard License subscriber, wanting 3 additional local postal codes, say so and let us know which of postal codes you want. Use the same instructions as above. Any subscriber giving up a listing, to move that listing to a better local listing, has the first opportunity to ReBuy the listing that they just gave up. The cost to rebuy and keep the listing for 2017 will be $15, same price as any other additional postal code. If you do not rebuy the listing, then the listing will be released on January 9, 2017 when we post the new lists of postal codes that are not being renewed. Do not put your credit card information in any emails that you send us. If you are buying additional local postal codes, or rebuying a previous local listing that you gave up, we will call you to get your credit card (once things cool down; make sure your phone number is in your email). You will need to pay by credit card when we call you, but your request does not need a payment to be locked in. Once again, first come first served. Compulife compensates subscriber referrals for new customers with a FREE local postal code for 2 full years, plus the balance of the remaining year. Refer an agent to try our software and that agent gets 6 free months of software (instead of 4) providing that they do the "Dare To Compare" challenge/tutorial to get the 6 free months (no purchase required). Once again, if your referral does that challenge, to get the free software, then you get a LOCAL postal code FREE for 2 full years, plus the remainder of the current year. When your FREE period on that postal code ends, you will have first right to renew it as a paid listing. Before that, you will be able to use it as a local postal code to bump. The time to use the bump will still be the first Monday in November. IMPORTANT: You have until November 7th to make referrals, earn your additional FREE local postal code, and use it to bump on: If I was an enterprising subscriber, who knows that term4sale is a profitable experience, I would be VERY busy in October referring everyone I can get my hands on. Use the following form to make your referral(s): Given the benefit of being able to bump paid listing in your local area, I am surprised that more subscribers do not take advantage of this opportunity. A lot of gold is being left on the table. Last year we told you that we had arrived at the point where demand was exceeding supply when it comes to postal codes. Last year's new restrictions on paid postal codes certainly helped to free up a number of postal codes, but then those postal codes got gobbled up in a land rush stampede in the second week of January. As we previously announced, we are turning up prices and turning down limits, to free up some more postal codes. Those changes were announced earlier this year, but we will review them here so you understand the change of prices in your renewal invoicing for 2017. IMPORTANT: We are not trying to penalize subscribers so much as we are trying to make sure that ALL subscribers get a kick at the can. We want term4sale to benefit ALL Compulife subscribers, not just a few subscribers a lot. Those who contact us inquiring about term4sale listings generally want to know what they can expect by way of results. I always say the same thing. For every 3 postal code listings you can expect ONE solid email contact through the system. Some subscribers do better than that, but it is a general rule of thumb. Now I say "email" referring to the contacts that come through the term4sale "agent" list where the consumer completes the email form and it is sent on to the 3 listed agents. NOTE: Virtually all contacts use the contact 3 method. There was a way to contact individual agents, but that is being removed from the new version of Term4Sale which will be introduced in October. Only those with ulterior reason for contacting our subscribers seemed to be using it. In addition to email contacts, your name and phone number are displayed in the listings. If a consumer calls you directly, and we KNOW some do, then we have no record of those contacts and that is icing on your cake. For the new guarantee this does not factor in, simply as we have no way to monitor such activity. For the first time we are going to GUARANTEE the One for Three result. Here's how the guarantee works: If you get to the end of December, and you did not have have at least one email for every 3 postal codes you have, we will reduce the cost for you to renew those postal codes for 2017. EXAMPLE: You have 14 postal codes, three local and 11 that you purchased. For 14 postal codes we expect: 14/3 = 5 contacts (4.67 rounded up). Let's assume that you had only 3 email contacts (note: we do not count duplicate or BOGUS contacts) On November 15th, we would have invoiced you $198 (11 X $18) for 2017 renewal. However, you really only got the activity we would have expected for 9 total postal codes, which would have been 3 local postal codes, and 6 additionally purchased postal codes. Therefore, we will credit your invoice DOWN to $108 (6 X $18) and give you the same 14 postal codes for 2017. In other words, you will have 5 of those 11 paid postal codes for free. If you did better than 1 for 3 (many have) then you owe us money. NO, we're just kidding. This is a minimum guarantee. IMPORTANT: There are NO REFUNDS, simply a reduced renewal cost for the SAME postal codes for the following year. You can add postal codes, and pay for those, but if you substitute any of those postal codes then the price of renewal for those will still be $18 for the year. This guarantee is designed to act as a way to retroactively balance out the cost of postal codes listings that are NOT as attractive or not producing. With increasing participation at www.term4sale.ca, we have arrived at the point where demand is beginning to exceed supply when it comes to postal codes. To counter that problem we will be increasing this years price for "paid" postal codes listings from $12 to $15. IMPORTANT: We are not trying to penalize subscribers so much as we are trying to make sure that ALL subscribers get a kick at the can. We want term4sale to benefit ALL Compulife subscribers, not just a few subscribers a lot. Those who contact us inquiring about term4sale listings generally want to know what they can expect by way of results. I always say the same thing. For every 3 postal code listings you can expect ONE solid email contact through the system. Some subscribers do better than that, but it is a general rule of thumb. Now I say "email" referring to the contacts that come through the term4sale "agent" list where the consumer completes the email form and it is sent on to the 3 listed agents. NOTE: Virtually all contacts use the contact 3 method. There was a way to contact individual agents, but that is being removed from the new version of Term4Sale which will be introduced in October. Only those with ulterior reason for contacting our subscribers seemed to be using it. In addition to email contacts, your name and phone number are displayed in the listings. If a consumer calls you directly, and we KNOW some do, then we have no record of those contacts and that is icing on your cake. For the new guarantee this does not factor in, simply as we have no way to monitor such activity. For the first time we are going to GUARANTEE the One for Three result. Here's how the guarantee works: If you get to the end of December, and you did not have have at least one email for every 3 postal codes you have, we will reduce the cost for you to renew those postal codes for 2017. EXAMPLE: You have 14 postal codes, three local and 11 that you purchased. For 14 postal codes we expect: 14/3 = 5 contacts (4.67 rounded up). Let's assume that you had only 3 email contacts (note: we do not count duplicate or BOGUS contacts) On November 15th, we would have invoiced you $162 (11 X $15) for 2017 renewal. However, you really only got the activity we would have expected for 9 total postal codes, which would have been 3 local postal codes, and 6 additionally purchased postal codes. Therefore, we will credit your invoice DOWN to $90 (6 X $15) and give you the same 14 postal codes for 2017. In other words, you will have 5 of those 11 paid postal codes for free. If you did better than 1 for 3 (many have) then you owe us money. NO, we're just kidding. This is a minimum guarantee. IMPORTANT: There are NO REFUNDS, simply a reduced renewal cost for the SAME postal codes for the following year. You can add postal codes, and pay for those, but if you substitute any of those postal codes then the price of renewal for those will still be $18 for the year. This guarantee is designed to act as a way to retroactively balance out the cost of postal codes listings that are NOT as attractive or not producing. The ability for ALL Windows PC subscribers to buy an additional 20 postal codes is unchanged. However, as previously announced, the renewal price for those 20 postal codes is going from $1.00 per month, to $1.25 per month, payable to the end of the calendar year. This means that those renewing for 2017 will receive an invoice of $15 per postal code for the year (over their local postal codes). Remember, you have last year's email traffic, and the postal code Analyzer, which is found here: The combination of those two things will guide you in that decision making process. Yes, at some point we will build a system to give you better information about postal code contact performance, but we will introduce a new pricing structure at the same time. So while you're thinking about some of the work this involves, we think you will eventually look back on the "good old days" when we make those changes (not in the short run). Once again, when you are invoiced for 2017 renewals, you are NOT required to renew any postal code. If you decide to drop all or some of your postal codes, those postal codes will come back into the pool of available postal codes on January 9th. In fact we expect that will happen, giving subscribers who are hungry for more, better listings a chance to jump in. IMPORANT: We give subscribers from November 15th to January 6th to pay their postal code renewals. That means you can decide in which year to expense the cost for tax deduction purposes. Yes, term4sale listings are an advertising expense and you can deduct them from your commission income. If you think you may benefit from the one in 3 guarantee wait until late in December to make your claim and pay your invoice. In addition to being able to buy an additional 3 local postal codes for $12 each (for 12 months), Standard License subscribers can buy an additional 60 postal codes over the first 20 that all Windows PC subscribers can purchase (most Compulife subscribers buy the personal use edition which only allows 3 local postal codes). The price per postal code, for postal codes over 20, will be the same increase, $1 to $1.25 ($15 per year). In the U.S. we actually add a surcharge of 50 cents per zip code per month, but we are not doing that (yet) in Canada. We deeply appreciate your business, and want to make sure that Compulife remains profitable for you. On the other hand, we need to free up space for other subscribers who want to participate but simply can't find good postal codes to be listed in. We are doing this in small yearly adjustments, trying to find the right balance. Here's a Tip: Personal use subscribers may want to upgrade from personal use to standard license to take advantage of the ability to get those 3 additional local postal codes (for a total of 6), and to be able to purchase more than 20 additional paid postal codes. We can do that upgrade for you on November 7th, when you call to maneuver into 3 additional better postal codes in your local area. The following applies to the U.S. version of term4sale, which you will find at: www.term4sale.com The Canadian site: www.term4sale.ca has not yet been updated but that will happen by the end of the year. The following will give you an idea of where we are going with it. We announced in the midmonth bulletin the introduction of the new changes to www.term4sale.com. I really like what Jeremiah has come up with and the new look and feel, together with the changes to content, should produce the objectives we set:
2. Make the site look more professional - the new logo is great 3. More aggressively encourage consumers to contact Compulife susbcribers For the most part I think we have achieved our goals. I did hear from some agents who had two negatives. First, those visiting the site who had recently used it sometimes had a problem with the site until they were able to refresh the home page. Some of the old style pages that were stored on their local machine/device were mixing with new pages, or vice versa, creating a bit of a mess. The refresh fixed it but some who called didn't know how to do a refresh. Second, some agents complained that the new format was not as nice for them because they had been taking our pricing quotes, doing a copy and paste to put those quote into other documents. The old quotes were simpler and worked better, we understand. While we appreciate agents that "free roll" and use term4sale, who add to our overall traffic numbers, the fact is that the target audience of term4sale is the consumer who isn't the least bit interested in copying and pasting anything. Consumers are just looking for the price of a life insurance product, and after they get those prices we are hoping to introduce them to you our customer. As a result of some of that agent dissatisfaction, some of our repeat visitor numbers have gone down slightly. But the good news is that our new visitor numbers have gone up. Before it was 50/50, now its 60/40 with new over repeat. That's a good sign that we are getting more consumers. The other good news was that I convinced a couple of agents to try the Windows PC software of Compulife pointing out to them that as an agent, the Windows PC software is really our intended product for agent use. Most important, I am seeing a lot more "green" in the google traffic. This means more people with phones are using the site and that was one of the objectives (responsive pages). The use of PC computers is on the downturn in some demographics and some people are using their smart phones more and more as their primary computer. Having the site compatible with phone was really, really important. I've also detected a bit of an up-tick (not huge) in the number of consumers providing information to the agents listed on the site. I hope that some of the third parties who refer consumers to the site, will take note of what I have to say about the value of dealing with an independent agent, and repeat that advice to their readers. Overall I believe that this has been a successful upgrade and I think once regular visitors are used to it, will keep even the repeat visitors happy. I have no doubt that first time visitors like it better than the old. |