Industrial Strength

ThomasNet revamped its business plan by giving the people what they wanted — and what they wanted was less paper.

The company was founded in 1898 as Thomas Publishing. “We like to say we’re a 110-year-old Internet business,” jokes publisher Paul Gerbino. Last year, the New York firm — which publishes directories of industrial suppliers — printed its last paper edition and became a completely online entity.

“The user was really the motivator toward our move to be 100% online, because they’re just not using print directories any more,” Gerbino says. “They’re looking for this information online because it’s easily assessable. And we knew we had to be there.”

In the past, the print directories were updated once a year; at one point, the Thomas Register was divided into more than 30 annual volumes, with about 19 Thomas Regional buying guides printed as well.

Gerbino-slated to speak at the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing’s Integrated Marketing Expo set for April 29 and 30 — says ThomasNet has two customer bases to consider: The users, engineers and procurement officers doing research on B-to-B suppliers; and the companies that are looking to reach these prospective buyers.

Companies don’t pay to be listed in the directory, though they can pay to secure higher rankings in the listings and advertising throughout the ThomasNet.com site in areas such as the newsroom. The company also consults with advertisers to help them build Web sites with catalog-style offerings.

Registration is not required to use the site. “The problem with registration is that users expect to have free access, so we abandoned registration several years ago,” Gerbino says.

Jerome Shaver, ThomasNet’s director of analytics and intelligence, notes that the number of visitors and what they’re looking at are tracked to help the sales force inform advertisers about what’s happening on the site.

And users do register for value-added services such as newsletters and a tool that allows visitors to save searches. Over 300,000 have signed up for the Industrial Market Trends biweekly newsletter, which spins out of a blog of the same name. Some 50,000 have agreed to receive product alert e-mails, which provide news on new products in 50 major categories.

“Users create a customized newsletter,” Gerbino says. “They can choose categories of interest and select the frequency of delivery and whether they want to get it via HTML or text.”

Another newsletter, The Link, keeps readers posted about goings-on at ThomasNet. It’s sent to approximately 400,000 opt-in subscribers.

The site’s primary focus is North America, but 20% of users are international. It’s promoted via search, print advertising and at trade shows.

Shaver, who also will speak at the CADM event, says the Industrial Market Trends blog has an important place in ThomasNet’s strategy.

“We keep in constant contact with our users,” he says. “For our demographic in particular, we need to keep an open dialogue with customers so when they want to do sourcing or find news, they come to Thomas.”

Web 2.0 and social networking is as important in the business-to-business space as it is in the consumer world, according to Gerbino.

“When we launched our blog in January 2005 we did a story called “Brazing vs. Welding.” When I read the story, my eyes glazed over because this stuff is Greek to me. But within 24 hours we had eight comments,” he says. “We had engineers arguing flux or no flux, this temperature vs. that temperature, this technology vs. that technology. It became a great thing. When you give people the opportunity to share and communicate with each other, they’re very open.”

ThomasNet hasn’t yet tried other social media, such as podcasting.

“What dictates our moves in certain technology is the research we do with our users,” Gerbino says. “As soon as we’ve reached a point where we believe our users want a service and we can offer it, we’ll go there.”

For more articles on integration, go to http://directmag.com/disciplines/integration/.