Guideposts

Situation Analysis

Guideposts is a leading non-profit organization that touches millions of lives every day through products and services that inspire, encourage, and uplift. Guideposts was founded in 1945 by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, one of the foremost motivational speakers of the twentieth century and author of 46 books, including the inspirational best seller, The Power of Positive Thinking, first published in 1952. More than 20 million copies of this acclaimed book have been sold. The organization’s flagship magazine title, Guideposts, has a paid circulation of 2 million. Its website Guideposts.com offers consumers the ability to choose faith based content appropriate to their stage in life and key interests. Ideals Publications, based in Nashville, Tennessee, is the retail book sales and distribution outlet of Guideposts, including Guideposts Books, Candy Cane Press, Williamson Books, and Ideals Press.  In total, Guideposts has annual direct to consumer and retail book sales of over 5.7 million copies.  Through magazines, books, prayer network and outreach programs, Guideposts helps people connect their faith-filled values to their daily lives. In 2006, Guideposts management decided to launch a new online community website site, a dedicated portal to harness and facilitate interaction among its millions of readers and thousands of volunteers around the world. Key to the new website was the need to automate the receipt of tens of thousands of monthly “prayer” requests.

Goals

1. Create an online forum and social community for members to communicate with each other, publish inspirational articles, follow and contribute to numerous blogs, and post prayer requests 
2. Automate the posting and processing of tens of thousands of monthly community “prayer” requests, and enable “tracking” of prayers by community members
3. Integrate with Guidepots.com website to facilitate ecommerce sales of book titles and magazine subscriptions, and the distribution of free booklets and self help materials 
4. Provide 24/7 customer service
5. Enable rapid publishing and updating of timely Guideposts content

Solution

Guidepost’s management team evaluated several mid-tier WCMS providers, and chose to implement Quantum Art’s “QP.7 Community” content management solution to achieve the organization’s stated objectives.Guideposts’ new website, www.ourprayer.org, combines a sophisticated content management framework allowing for timely content updates about the organization’s extensive publications portfolio with a fully integrated community portal to facilitate a huge number of Guideposts member prayer requests and responses; chat rooms; volunteer opportunities; calendars etc. as well as the collection of donations. The site is also directly linked to the Guidepost parent website, to facilitate ecommerce transactions for magazine subscriptions and book sales.

Client Return on Investment

• New website www.ourprayer.org launched on time and under budget
• Enables current monthly volume of 45,000 prayer requests
• Created self service customer support, and expanded availability to 24/7 through new website and community portal
• Increased productivity of communications department and facilitates rapid online publishing and updating of relevant articles, testimonials, blogs, calendars, and other portal features
• Since launching Quantum Art’s QP.7, Guidepost is approaching a 10:1 ROI based on direct sales increases and cost reductions in the first three years

 Client Quotes

“Quantum Art had the best content management solution for Guideposts because they were able to meet and customize the development of the “Our Prayer” online social network and community website.” “We will continue working with Quantum Art to continuously improve the community experience for our millions of members.”

Philip Charles-Pierre, VP Digital Media