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VOLTIMAG

The News Letter #07/04 – July 15th, 2004

For any more details, contact Manuela Barelli (manuela.barelli@voltimum.com), phone : +41 (0)22 306 21 85

Overall, Voltimum did well in June, even if May’s high was not reached. Surprisingly, the south of Europe did not perform as well as in May for various reasons.

Good news went from France ( champion for the month ), Sweden and quite encouragingly, UK.Germany continued its steady growth.

June was the month of at least two significant events:

- The first full VoltiLink was open with Nordisk Solar in Sweden- All countries switched to the new friendlier Look and Feel

July and August usually slowed down by holidays in the various countries will be used by all countries organisations to stabilize and improve quality within their sites. All areas and contents will be audited through detailed action plans.

Summer will also be the period for budget 2005 finalisation and time to prepare a specific “Road Map 2004 –5“ with our shareholders in the UK. The purpose is definitely to share targets and policies with our manufacturers countries organisation and from there improve our situation in this country. The Road Map is to be approved both by the ExCo and the shareholders subsidiaries in the UK early September.

Traffic numbers for June

Number of new accounts opened : 3,619

Number of recurrent users : 23,176

Number of pages viewed ( logged in ) : 843,838

Number of pages viewed ( total ) : 1,224175

Bruno Hamon

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France

Comments on general business environment and activities of competition  In June, Voltimum France has concentrated all its efforts on recurrent users by sending 4 Voltinews including 2 "light" Voltinews to go through the anti-Spam filters but also 2 Fax-mailing dedicated to the one-time users of the month to get them twice.

  The user database has stayed stable when compared to May’s. Traffic has decreased a little bit due to the fact that we reduced the size of our diaporamas ( 5 to 7 slides ) compare to May ( > 20 slides ).   Unfortunately, we didn't get Janoplast as a partner.  We smoothly move from old to new look&feel June 29th and we are now starting " Summer works " to clean all the parts of the site.  In parallel, we had an agreement with ElecPromotion for common actions around the Elec 2004 fairs. Signature in July (25k€ + services revenue)   Comments on the business development

- Customer In June, no action at the recruiting level. We confirm the 30,000 active members. - Increase subscribers The re-launch of the fee services is plan for September and will be the main objectives of the summer works.  - Partners Unfortunately, we didn't sign any new partnership in June. A study of all potential partnerships will be done during the Country Committee meeting, July 9th.

Traffic

- Total pages viewed in June 2004 : 305,000

-Total recurrent users June 2004 : 9,510

A good utilisation of the KPIs allows us to focus on one-time visitors and invite them for further visits.

Notices

-During the summer period we are going to update and “clean” all news and universes as a consequence of the new Look & Feel introduction.

-Specials thanks to Manuela for her help on Voltimum France administration.

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Italy

Registration and traffic resultWe reached 19,689 registered target users and 169,085 cumulated page views at the end of June.

Our main figures:

Ø Subscribers 255Ø Registered Target Users 19,689Ø Newsletter database 26,932Ø Page views target + anonymous 238,606Ø Visits 12,603Ø Unique Visitors 4,772Ø Recurrent Users 1,715Ø Loyal Users 5,994

Recurrent Visitors

Loyal Visitors

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Distinct users

Marketing and Communication

During the month of June Voltimum Italy reduced Marketing activity because of the optimisation of the new “ Look and Feel”. Some non ADSL users ( still very frequent in Italy ) complained about “ slow “ pages and we had to do some homework. This has been done before the end of June and July will see a return to satisfactory traffic figures.

E-mailing

Here below our e-mailing activities:

E-mailing Data

VoltiTech 16 June

2nd part of the Guida to ADSL users 28 June

E-mailing to promote 3rd section of the Installation Guide 1 July

VoltiNews 6 July

Voltitech 13 July

Road Shows

During this month we organized a very successful tour by the most important distributors in Palermo. We registered more than 150 users.

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Date Wholesaler City Registration14-giu Migliore Sonepar Palermo 4015-giu ElettroIngross 94 Palermo 2516-giu Sciacca Palermo 3817-giu Strano Palermo 2618-giu Spelux Palermo 23Totale 152

Telemarketing

On July 5 we have started a new Telemarketing action on 1,600 users who frequently visited the portal. Our aim is to sell subscriptions and to investigate how they’re used to look for information.

UK

Business Development

In June the UK team heaved a sigh of relief as our page view figures started to climb again. This improvement came after two months of constant analysis and actions to detect how to improve the sending of our emails and to get past the ever more watchful Spam filters.

Like all the other countries we migrated to the new look and feel in June: Voltimum UK on Friday 18th June and Edmundson on Thursday 24th June. We marked the launch with a bumper new-look newsletter containing gifts and giveaways.

Companies in the market continue to experience structural change: we have had changes of Voltimum representatives at MK (Mark Kelly) and Eaton Electrical due to reorganisations.

We have reached a relatively healthy base of registered users now, just over 17,200 against an annual target of 20,000, and our attention now turns to page views, recurrent use and generation of revenues.

In July & August, the UK team will concentrate on 'housekeeping' i.e. basic improvements of the site, our newsletters and use of our user database. Our Business Directory is currently being built with a view to attracting service companies to the portal before September, which will generate additional revenue for Voltimum.

We are also working to prepare our CPD training modules.

Sadly, we did not win the ‘Innovation of the Year Award’ announced on 24th June. We were beaten by Wagner UK.

Registrations

Registrations, as predicted, slowed in June as we turned our attention to page views and recurrent use. Nonetheless, we are happy with the 877 registrations we achieved. Of these, approx 200 are the individual branches of Newey & Eyre meaning that each individual branch will start to receive our emails.

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Registrations June 2004: 877Cumulative registrations: 17,208Cumulative registrations (incl manufacturers): 18,885

Breakdown of Cumulative Registrations:

Small Contractors: 29%Large Contractors: 19%Specifiers: 11%Distributors: 11%Panel Builders: 1%Others 20%Manufacturers 9%

This breakdown continues to reflect our marketing emphasis in the UK.

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Page Views & Recurrent Use

April and May were 'nightmare' months in the UK as we struggled to increase our page views and recurrent use against an ever more powerful resistance ( from the Internet in general ) to our email actions. Many of the steps we took to overcome this obstacle were outlined in our May report and we are happy to report a much more healthy status at end June.

We sent out the following newsletters in June

Voltimum + Edmundson Voltinews combined total of 6,000 page views

Voltimum + Edmundson VoltiBulletin (Fire Resistant cable) combined total of 15,200 page views

Voltimum + Edmundson Did you Know? New Look and feelof Voltimum combined total of 15,500 page views

These figures are in addition to the 2,000 average daily page views.

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The good success of our Gifts and giveaways bulletin will lead us to introduce this feature into Voltinews on a more regular basis. Seven of our manufacturers offered prizes which generated 3,502 entries from 1,061 individual users. Our analysis shows that these users were ‘good quality’ frequent users of the site.

Total page views at end June was 123,000 logged in page views.

Page views per login were 11 : a very good performance.

Recurrent use remains disappointing and we will be spending much time on analysis of our user base and undertaking actions to get one-time users to return to the site. Recurrent use in June was 1,290.

In July our big story for July is the introduction of Part P of the Building Regulations, which will have a major impact on UK electrical contractors.

Manufacturers

A meeting was held with Vent Axia on 3rd June. Paul Kilburn, new Commercial Director will present his proposition to the board in July. Their financial year starts in August so if a decision is not made then Voltimum will not be in the budget for 2005. He criticised the UK manufacturing partners for their lack of support saying that he believed Voltimum would sink or swim depending on the support of the manufacturing partners. Only Osram seemed to be creating awareness in his opinion.

Voltimum was given a very positive mention and manufacturers were encouraged to join by the MD of Edmundsons at the Edmundson supplier dinner on 9th June. MF to follow up on this positive support.

Meetings will be held with the following manufacturers in July: Cablofil, Siemens & Thorn.In August meetings are scheduled with Cooper Lighting & Security, Marshall Tufflex and Seaward.

Wholesalers

MF had a very positive meeting with Rexel Senate in early June. They are keen to develop a Volti-Link with us. Next steps are to have a more technical meeting to discuss the various types of VoltiLinks and the costs involved. A technical meeting is planned for early August.

Industry Bodies

MF had very positive meetings with the IEE and NICEIC. Both will contribute regular items to Voltimum free of charge and the IEE will give Voltimum a permanent slot in its Wiring Matter publication. Both organisations will join our Expert Area, enabling users to forward technical questions to them alongside the ECA and SELECT. This is now a very strong central point for expertise.

Catalogue

The Catalogue grew by a further 523 items this month thanks to deliveries from ABB (93) and ITW (430). This brings the total to 21,409. We are very concerned about two issues: quality of ITW catalogue pages (MF to write to ITW) and lack of deliveries from MK and Eaton. We have received nothing from these manufacturers in 2004 and Eaton has not yet identified who will take responsibility for this input.

Marie Anne trained DRAKA who have committed to their first delivery of 200 products in July 2004.

Also in June, Editor training was given to all manufacturers who wished to attend.

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Germany

Portal look&feel RELAUNCH

Beginning of June Germany successfully launched the new Look & Feel

Parallel to switching from the old to the new design the future structure and navigation that will stay unmodified for the foreseeable future has been established. Voltimum will use the summer holidays’ season to adapt the content areas “Anwendungstechnik” and “mein Betrieb” to the new structure and navigation.

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VoltiNEWS look&feel relaunch

Mid of June, shortly after the successful re-launch of the portal the email newsletter layout and design has been adapted to the new L&F

New catalogues on Voltimum

InPro luminaries catalogue/wholesaler catalogue on Voltimum

The InPro installer assortment has been specifically developed to the needs of installers and covers the most requested applications/ products. The InPro luminaries’ program has been selected and arranged together with the wholesaler partners of Philips Licht.

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New content areas

In June another two important topics and applications of the profession have been covered with new VoltiSPOT content areas

VoltiSPOT Air Conditioning

VoltiSPOT Lightning&Surge Protection

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Voltimum Promotion

VoltiTRiKE road show impressions June

Eltkauf/Eltkontor Forum Salzburg

Wholesaler exhibition Häusler München

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K P I

Additional 500 new target users in June 2004 mostly as a result of the road show activities

- We succeeded to transform part of the anonymous traffic into logged-in pages

- Recurrent and distinct visitors stable though not significantly increasing

- Loyal user base is not growing respectively, though the negative trend has been stopped

Pages viewed: 186,000 target: 130,000 Distinct visitors: 7,000

Loyal users: 7,000 Recurrent users: 4,400

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Sweden

Traffic

The month of June was a good month with recurrent users, even though the month is short because of holidays. The page views were also good, with two newsletters and a competition sent out by email.

For July the prediction is lower as that is the main summer vacation month in Sweden.

Marketing

Direct MarketingThe VoltiNEWS fax mailing still brings in some registrations.

NewslettersThe reading rate of the newsletters remains high.

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Partners

FagerhultWe had a fruitful meeting with Fagerhult in Habo. They are interested in the Swedish and other Voltimum markets. We will create and a coordinated offer for them and then get back in touch.

STFWe now have a new deal with STF. This is a new contract, which will bring more revenues to Voltimum. Directly after the summer Voltimum will set up a new Experts Advice area about Safety and Standards. This will include a section in the newsletter, an “Education Tip” news page and participation in the Forum, along with the fixed pages in the portal. STF has already appointed their new dedicated project leader to start.

SpainResults June 04

TOTAL PAGES VIEWED JUNE 04’ VOLTIMUM SPAIN : 260,686 pages (Without counting pages viewed by manufacturers)

Number of New Registrations by Month

New registrations per month in June 04’: 963 (Target group)

TOTAL Nº OF REGISTERED USERS: 18,123 (target group)

Number of Recurrent users by Month

TOTAL Recurrent users JUNE 04’ VOLTIMUM SPAIN: 4,377 (Targeted users)

Number of Subscribers

We started selling subscriptions in January. We have today 130 subscribers .

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Marketing & Communication

Newsletter

We sent 3 newsletter in June, all of them segmented by users and region.

E-mailing

ABB sent an e-mailing to their data base with links to Voltimum.

Magazine

Hager attached a Voltimum leaflet on every number of their magazine.

Mailing

Schneider attached a Voltimum leaflet on every catalogue to their database.

Content

New Look and Feel Re-launch

Alfredo Gargantilla and all the team has been very busy in June to put on line Voltimum with the new design.We received congratulations from different users, manufacturers and wholesalers.

CEDOM

Alfredo Gargantilla and José Moreno had 2 meetings with Maite Manzano, Manager of CEDOM. CEDOM is the Spanish Manufacturers Association of Domotics.

CEDOM will build our new section about domotics, and we will announce that the section comes from CEDOM.

As well we will have the possibility of making seminars together. They have to give us an answer this month.

CV Tools

Alfredo Gargantilla had contacts with CV Tools, the provider of our Job Offers section, to design the section.We will we ready to show this section at the end of July.

La Salle Ingenieria

Alfredo Gargantilla met them to share content and to study the possibility of making seminars together.

Installers Federations

- XI FENIE Congress

Voltimum was present in IX FENIE Congress We delivered leaflets from ABB, Nexans, Philips, and Schneider booths.As well it was very useful to make new contacts.

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- FENIE (National Installers Association)

Xavier Buch and José Moreno had a meeting in Madrid with José Antonio González, General Manager.We discussed about our partnership and ways to improve our relationship. They will publish more info about Voltimum in their magazine to 10,000 installers. As well we will try to make a public event to explain our partnership.

APIEM (Madrid Installers Association)

Xavier Buch and José Moreno met in Madrid Alfonso Lázaro, General Manager. Voltimum will be presented in APIEM during 4th quarter of the year.

FECEMINTE (Telecomm Installers Association of Catalonia)

Xavier Buch met Laura Alonso, Manager of FECEMINTE. We offered them different ways of working together. They will give us an answer after their Executive Committee.

Manufacturers

- Fuji Electric

Xavier Buch and José Moreno had a meeting with Ramón Basarrate, Product Manager. He is very interested in being present in Voltimum. We will go on dealing after summer.

- Weidmüller

Xavier Buch and José Moreno met José Carlos Álvarez, Regional Manager Southern Europe. We discussed the possibility of joining in Spain, France and Italy.They will give us an answer after summer.

- Esselte – Dymo

We contacted Esselte – Dymo and sent info about Voltimum. We will have a meeting after summer

- 3M

José Moreno met Juan Pablo Sánchez, Sales & Marketing Manager 3M Spain. They will study to join Voltimum in 05’.

Fermax

Xavier Buch had a meeting with Cristina Bordils. They will study to join in 05’. We will have another meeting in October,

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Wholesalers

Xavier Buch and José Moreno met Luís Pérez, Marketing Manager ElectroStocks. ElectroStocks is using some content from Voltimum Spain, specially our new products section. We gave them an offer to provide content to their Web.

Seminars REBT - ICT 04’

Laura Sanz managed the seminars we made in Madrid and Zaragoza.The subjects were REBT on Industry, and REBT on Public Buildings.

Alda Grupo (Wholesaler Buying Group) was interested in buying some tickets for their customers to this seminar.

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