Mediaboss Marketing

BOSTON, July 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- KITSY LANE (www.kitsylane.com), a fashion technology company today announced the launch of the first of its kind email and social marketing platform to support automated and targeted business growth for at-home entrepreneurs. The unique social marketing platform moves the concept of direct sales online, executing a new business model with an emphasis on social selling. Since its private beta launch in end of May 2012, Kitsy Lane has accumulated 1,000 at-home entrepreneurs. Kitsy Lane's first round of funding was led by Point Judith Capital.

The Kitsy Lane social marketing platform enables entrepreneurs to open an online boutique free of charge. Boutique Owners can customize an online storefront, select merchandise to sell, stock a weekly flash sale, and market to their existing social networks as well as develop a new customer base. With an innovative set of tools offered to users for marketing their boutique, Kitsy Lane provides step-by-step assistance to Boutique Owners as they grow not only their business, but their networks and style credibility. As an example of harnessing the power and reach of social media, Boutique Owners can connect their online store to Facebook, automatically publishing sales, favorites and product reviews to their Timeline.

"Traditional direct sales businesses are costly, time-consuming, and scale slowly for the operator," says Andy Fox, CEO, Founder, Kitsy Lane. "By leveraging online social selling, we've created a turnkey vehicle for would-be entrepreneurs to operate and grow a business in their spare time, and have a lot of fun doing it."

Boutique Owners name their boutiques, receive a custom URL destination and stock their boutique with jewelry and accessories that they select from a master catalog of over 700 stylist-selected pieces from emerging designers and on-trend house brands. The catalog's offerings continually change and grow, to ensure that Boutique Owners and their customers always have opportunities to make new discoveries. Initially, the merchandise mix will be focused on fashion jewelry and accessories. Prices range from $20-$250 per item, and shipping, order processing, and payments are all handled by Kitsy Lane. Boutique Owners see a profit for their sales and marketing efforts by earning a commission of up to 25 percent on everything they sell.

"I have years of experience in retail sales, but running my own digital boutique with Kitsy Lane has been incredible. They support me in so many ways... I have a growing base of customers and I can manage the whole thing in just a little bit of time it's actually really easy. Plus the site and the merchandise look great!" shares Nicole Chow, Kitsy Lane Boutique Owner.

Kitsy Lane provides an innovative online shopping experience. With a nod to the traditional brick-and-mortar experience, shoppers receive one-on-one attention from Boutique Owners by receiving personalized product recommendations through email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Customers can also share their own favorite picks across social networks, connecting to Facebook and posting their favorites or sharing recommendations, which helps to build business for the Boutique Owner.

Not only do Boutique Owners find an opportunity to build a supplementary income stream that they can manage in the midst of a busy lifestyle, but also they become part of an entrepreneurial community where they learn the basics of social marketing and sales. Boutique Owners and shoppers also have access to a wealth of rich editorial content on the website, including designer spotlights, styling tips, videos, blog posts, and more, making for a fully immersive experience.

After the launch, Kitsy Lane will be introducing a number of select blogger, celebrity, and stylist boutiques which will be specially featured throughout the website.

Kitsy Lane was founded by Andy Fox, the founder and operator of a portfolio of successful tech start-ups including Imidio, iConverse, and Technically Speaking. Joining him as CMO is Jeannette McCIennan, former CEO of DailyMakeover.com, President of OgilvyInteractive for North America and the SVP of Sales & Marketing at Mapquest. Leading the buying and merchandising team is Meeka Corporan (formerly of Rue La La and TJX), and Creative Director Melissa Wilber.

Contact:Diana Bianchini Di Moda Public Relations 310.288.0077 diana@dimodapr.com

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Kitsy Lane Introduces First-of-Its-Kind Social Marketing and Email Platform that Drives Social Commerce for ...

For large companies that can afford to hire Web technicians, social marketing can be a breeze. But for small businesses, just learning the lingo can be daunting, said entrepreneur Geoff Cramer.

We were getting beaten over the head with social media, Cramer recalls of his years managing a Brookline real estate company. That was when a light bulb went on.

In late 2009, he teamed up with David Black, who owns a mortgage company, and boot-strapped SocialMadeSimple, a Newton-based Web company that offers small businesses willing to pay a fee analytics-based guidance to simplify social marketing.

That year, only 24 percent of small businesses had a profile on a social network, Cramer said. Today, the percentage has more than doubled, he said, but fewer than 10 percent of them post daily.

Instead, most treat their Facebook and other social network accounts as Web pages, listing their address and phone number and little else, Cramer said.

But the reality is, if youre not regularly sharing information, he said, you will be invisible.

For a fee ranging from $19 a month to $500 a month, SocialMadeSimple helps its 6,000 users optimize their presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs, with plans to add Pinterest and Google Plus.

The lowest fee gets businesses access to an online tool that allows them to manage all of those from one place, with guidance and industry-specific Web articles they can share, Cramer said. The highest fee gets them someone who manages their online reputation and both posts daily on all of their accounts and responds to others posts.

Its word-of-mouth marketing online, he said. Well make sure theyre staying on the cutting edge.

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Company's social-ly challenged? They'll make it Simple

By now, the majority of real estate professionals have realized that social media is a language that should be spoken fluentlynot just in certain niche groups or generations. But being involved in social media and excelling at it are two different things, and many are using social marketing solely as a means to promote themselves and their business. If thats the case for your company, then youre doing it all wrong.

So how can you do it right? Louise Deely, an associate broker with Realty Connect USA, in Woodbury N.Y., has hit a sweet spot with consumer connections. Her number one piece of advice? It cant just all be about real estate.

How Pop-a-Note targets this critical element of an agents marketing toolkit as well as a quick overview of the systems features will be highlighted in a webinar open to all subscribers by RISMedia next week. Click here for dates and times!

In a recent Mashable article, Nellie Akalp, the CEO of CorpNet.com, notes that for businesses, only 5 to 10 percent of social media activity should be self-promotional. Social media is all about building relationships and growing trust, writes Akalp, whose company helps entrepreneurs with budding businesses. Its okay to ask for the sale, just not in social channels.

A 14-year real estate veteran, Deely concurs. I try to inject humor into my marketing. It makes clients aware youre there, so later on, when they think of real estate, they think of you.

In order to stay top-of-mind with her clients, Deely recently picked up RISMedias new social marketing system, Pop-a-Note, which allows real estate professionals to keep in touch using interesting and fun pop culture conversation-starter emails, including real-estate-related topics that are branded to the agent and further include an agent-branded News Hub web page where clients link to further reading and real estate news headlines.

The Pop-a-Note conversational marketing system is based on the idea that by providing clients with interesting content, you are both entertaining them and building a stronger relationship. The system provides agents with a wealth of original content written by the RISMedia editorial team and includes topics ranging from pop culture to health, travel, business, technology, real estate and more.

How Pop-a-Note targets this critical element of an agents marketing toolkit as well as a quick overview of the systems features will be highlighted in a webinar open to all subscribers by RISMedia next week. Click here for dates and times!

Pop-a-Note allows you to choose the information you send, when you send it and who you send it to and allows users to fully edit the notes or write their own. New features released this week offer a branding power-play with beautifully branded email notes linking to an agent-branded News Hub where subscribers can read the full content plus the latest real estate headlines, all while viewing the agents photo, logo and contact information.

So far, Deely has found Pop-a-Note content to be an effective conversation starter.

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Media Maven: Innovative Agent Boosts Client Connections with Pop-a-Note

July 17, 2012

Consumer-to-consumer social marketing software provider Extole announced July 17 the launch of its next generation C2C platform, says Angela Bandlow, VP of marketing at Extole.

The revamped suite includes full support for Facebook Open Graph, new social expressions and more advanced social analytics, according to a company release.

The Facebook Open Graph enablement allows brands to utilize consumer stories that are then broadcasted across Facebook to the consumers and to their friends' timelines and newsfeeds.

The Facebook Open Graph system gives consumers the opportunity to tell their story, which brands can now do at scale, Bandlow says.

Extole's social expressions tool gives users the ability to move beyond the catchall of like to create their own custom verbs, such as want crave and need, Bandlow notes. The advanced social analytics tool provides ROI information to brands, according to Extole's release.

Our goal is to tie in website with social channels and customer communications, Bandlow says. Our new thing is social expression, but any customers can take advantage of our platform.

Extole has a customer base of over 250 brands. The company worked with companies such as T-Mobile, Vogue, and Folica during a roughly four month beta period, says Bandlow. During this time we were able to find what was working and what wasn't based on their feedback.

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Extole launches next generation C2C social marketing platform

Political actors can benefit from more from targeted social marketing than email blasts. Monitoring supporters and rewarding higher-clout followers can do well to spread a political groups message and educate voters.

While Internet users continue to use traditional digital communications like email, brands have much more valuable tools to succeed.Social media engagement tool Attentive.lygives non-profits, political campaigns and businesses the means to monitor their social buzz, identify potential brand evangelists and micro-target supporters. By learning more about their supporters, clients of this service from Fission Strategycan more effectively encourage posts and offer rewards. Such a product will be extremely topical in this presidential election year, when many types of organizations will be projecting a message and listening to the public.

Helping organizations transition from email lists to social media

Most organizations and political groups (or even businesses) still use emails as their main channel engage with supporters and citizens. Fission Strategy partner Rosalyn Lemieux tells lAtelier that organizations and administrations have resources invested in their email list and are hesitant to use it less in favor of social media. Attentive.ly serves to lower this barrier by making use of the hard earned email list to populate their new social monitoring campaign, she explains. Users of the service import email addresses, connect their social accounts and create groups for specific topics, such as activists and donors, and can then monitor and search supporter posts.

Lets them identify supporters and empower voters

Monitoring social networks can reveal not only who is posting about a client, but what their related interests are. As Lemieux explains to lAtelier, When youre focused as an organization, sometimes you miss what your supporters are focusing on. Instead of emailing a single message, Attentive.ly helps its clients connect with supporters by looking at individual profiles instead of aggregating data. This could do much for political groups that are hoping to encourage voter registration and participation. While technology has always been affecting democracy, social networks are particularly effective because people react to social pressure to register and go [vote] Lemieux argues. Attentive.ly wants to make scalable tools available that empower a market to bring about social change.

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Switching from emails to social marketing could benefit political actors