The Long & Winding Road to Creating a Free Community Platform

Ramius Corporation, IIeX Atlanta 2014 Stephen Thompson, EVP

Ramius

• Social software company from inception in 1999

• Started in the consumer space, diversified to online communities for businesses

• Between 2008 - 2010, the world changed and we acted

Online Research Communities

• Several research agencies from around the world had used our community software to build online insight communities

• Even though the fit was imperfect, it led us to discover a nascent market for online qualitative research

• We saw our expertise could be channeled to build a market leading, disruptive product for online researchers - Recollective (Pro)

The Big Idea

• Consumers are doing the research, just not in an organized way or calling it qualitative research

• We wanted to empower them with a free research-grade tool for insight gathering

• Attract users to Recollective who wouldn’t otherwise engage a researcher

• Create a service intuitive enough for consumers…and pros

Recollective Baseline

• Recollective Baseline is a full-featured offering targeted at consumers and small and medium sized businesses

• Not a trial or a teaser and not intended as a platform for up-selling

• Currently, there is no path to upgrade online to a paid premium service and there are no immediate plans to introduce such

• We believe that for a majority of users, the functionality currently offered is all you need

• Helps businesses do their insights gathering in a more organized and effective way

Free? Are you mad?

• Recollective Baseline is 100% free to use

• Being free eliminates cost as a risk to trying it out

• Free creates interest in and awareness of Recollective through buzz and publicity

• We think everyone should have the tools to gather insights

• Pro features are where the extra value lies, so that’s where we charge

Recollective Baseline

Baseline Features

• It’s the same software that we offer to Pro users, with some of the advanced features dialled down to simplify the experience

• Build engagement through a series of Activities, Discussion forums or direct Messages to participants.

• Up to 50 people, unlimited time, activities, discussions and messages

• Run up to 3 studies concurrently

• Fully mobile

Point and click to build Activities from 8 different types including video and image review

Add unlimited Activities and drag them into any order for completion

Start unlimited discussion boards with embedded photos, video and email notifications

Responses are socialized via social media style streams that support commenting and ratings

Highlight any text to save an excerpt and add codes and private backroom notes

Explore keyword associations through interactive word clouds

Full control to step down into activity-level analysis tools, charts and data tables

Complete set of reports for participation, excerpts and activities. Plus, transcribe everything into PDF

— Thanks —

Check it out athttp://recollective.com