Mediaboss Marketing

Votigo's new social marketing suite includes a promotions manager from which marketers can launch photo and video contests, sweepstakes, and other promotional apps in multiple languages across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks. It works in both the mobile environment and the Web.

Votigo has debuted a full-fledged social marketing suite that builds around its original core functionality of social promotions.

The 6-year-old company is offering a price point that is reasonable for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as functionality that can scale to enterprise level fairly easily, Mike La Rotonda, co-CEO and founder, told CRM Buyer.

"We have extended our engagement apps and added a full conversation manager that allows you to monitor the conversation from your customers across the social channel," he said. "You can post messages out to Twitter and Facebook and can see what people are responding to."

The company is also rolling out a social CRM feature set, which in its first iteration will focus on managing social contacts.

"Longer term," La Rotonda said, "we envision that platform plugging into other CRM products such as Salesforce.com or Sugar CRM."

The suite includes a number of features. Chief among them is a promotions manager from which marketers can launch photo and video contests, sweepstakes, and other promotional apps in multiple languages across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks. It works in both the mobile environment and the Web.

The promotions manager touches on the full promotion cycle: from creating the apps, to sharing and publicizing them to social audiences, to moderating submissions and fan commentary.

Another feature is the conversation manager, which serves as an interface to manage two-way conversations with fans on social media.

Besides managing social contacts, the social CRM piece includes features that track engagement and influence, and target special offers and communications. There is also analytics functionality, allowing users to measure and assess campaigns across the various social media platforms -- and email as well.

The rest is here:
Votigo Ventures Into Full-Scale Social Marketing

Oracle Corp. has announced the acquisition of a social marketing firm. San Francisco-based Involver, founded in 2007, offers tools for developers to create advertising campaigns on social media networks such as Facebook. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"Companies are looking to harness the full potential of social media to increase brand loyalty, connect with potential customers and anticipate buyers' needs," Oracle noted.

Oracle, an enterprise software provider, has aggressively fleshed out its social media capabilities in recent months, beginning in May with a deal for Vitrue, a social media engagement service. The following month, Oracle acquired Collective Intellect, a social media analytics company.

Even though Facebook's troubled IPO in May cast some doubt over consumer social media, deals in the enterprise sector have continued at a scorching pace.

Salesforce.com snapped up social media advertising firm Buddy Media in a $689 million tie-up in June, while Microsoft acquired workplace collaboration software maker Yammer for $1.2 billion in July.

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Oracle buys social marketing firm

This article is written by a member of our expert contributor community.

Pick up any contemporary marketing book and you'd think that marketing has completed changed over the last few years. Online marketing, social marketing, conversation marketing, traditional marketing; there are so many angles, it is easy to feel like you are constantly behind the curve. So here is a back-to-basic approach that helps you focus on what you need to do to be successful.

The core of any marketing program entails only three goals lead generation, brand building, and thought leadership. You need to achieve all of these to some degree, so it is important that you understand the purpose of each marketing activity. Here is a short description of the three goals:

To make that hat trick happen, you could use any of these traditional or emerging techniques.

Event marketing:examples include exhibiting at a trade show, sponsoring a conference, or hosting a partner meeting. Although these are classic lead generation activities, I urge you to take a broader view. Think about how you can use an event to build your brand: run contests to generate fun, post infographics or give out ebooks to provide valuable information, or give away items related to your product or service. Just make sure these activities are closely associated with your brand and the image you wish to create. Hiring a magician might be good fun, but if it doesnt connect with your brand, dont do it.

I once worked at a company where the event manager hired two models to stand in our trade show booth. He brought a camera so he could take pictures of attendees with the models. We did get thousands of leads, but they were all junk. I am amazed at how many companies waste money at shows with such silly promotions. Another good idea is to secure speaking opportunities for company executives at industry events. Have them speak as experts, not as salespeople.

If they are willing to stay away from your brand, they can establish themselves as go-to people for information by sharing experiences, insightful anecdotes, or market trends. Just remember, the topic has to be related to your business. Getting hundreds of people to attend an event is worthless if the attendees cant tie the persons expertise to the companys business.

Pay-per-click advertising:examples include Google Adwords and advertising on Facebook or LinkedIn. This is a classic lead generation activity, but it can also be used to build the brand and create brand awareness. Many companies run contests or promotions using paid online advertising to get people aware of a new product or service.

Social media:examples include creating a blog, using Twitter to communicate with your ecosystem, or maintaining Facebook pages. This is one type of activity that very few companies get right. Social media channels are not usually good for lead generation. The worst abuse is sending out product messages by Twitter to followers several times a day. Its a major turnoff. Rather, these channels should be used to exhibit market expertise and highlight topics that interest your market ecosystem. Blogs are a wonderful way to tell a story in your own, unfiltered way.

Originally posted here:
How To Score A Marketing Hat Trick

SACRAMENTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

StreamSend, a leading email marketing service provider and creator of the free social marketing tool suite StreamSend Share, has added a new feature that empowers businesses to connect with customers and prospects with a real-time widget in email messages, delivering live content that is personalized and relevant up to the second.

With this new real-time widget, StreamSend lets businesses embed any dynamic items they want web sites, social conversations, blogs, news feeds, all kinds of ongoing communications in their emails to engage customers, increase offer effectiveness, and keep content fresh even after campaigns have been sent.

This is a big step forward in creating dynamic marketing communications, said Dan Forootan, president of StreamSend Email Marketing. We work with businesses to create emails that attract and interest customers, and our real-time widget brings data capability that adds another dimension to the value these messages deliver, just by opening the email.

Whether the email contains a video, all or portions of a website, location-based targeting, connection to physical stores or another live component, customers are more likely to enter conversations and respond to offers on a real-time basis within email communications.

And with StreamSend Shares built-in features, businesses can create and send the message once, then customers can easily pass along these messages to other interested recipients, who will also view these items playing in place with real time impact. Businesses can then track all the resulting statistics as the shared communications continue to travel among further recipients.

The StreamSend Share Real-Time Widget is the latest addition as StreamSend Share continually improves to help businesses build profitable customer relationships with content and messages that are welcomed then shared into a continually growing social network of loyal followers and subscribers.

About StreamSend

StreamSend offers an easy-to-use, affordable and reliable email marketing service designed to help businesses maximize the reach of their marketing budget when sending an email newsletter or using Social Media. StreamSend offers a number of industry-leading standard pricing plans, private-label and affiliate programs and hands-on personal client service. Started in 1998, StreamSend is a leader in Email Marketing.

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StreamSend Takes Email Marketers Live

ATLANTA & HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Engauge, the leading U.S.-based independent agency for the social age, and key founders of WE Marketing Group (WMG), Chinas leading independent agency, have formed WE Engauge, Chinas first global social marketing agency. The firm will serve multinational and native brands throughout Greater China, a country that boasts the largest online population of any nation; its over 500 million users are also the most socially active participants in the world.

There is tremendous opportunity in social media for brands in China, said Rick Milenthal, Executive Chairman of Engauge. The Chinese consumers are adopting these technologies faster than anyone in the world. There is a real void of agencies that understand Chinese consumers and social media culture as well as the unique social platforms within China. Our partnership creates the agency that fills that void.

WE Engauge is already working with several brands, including Lee Kum Kee, Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Cisco Systems, Citibank Hong Kong, Stroili Oro, M&M Mars, and more.

WMG Chairman and industry leader Viveca Chan will serve as Chairman and CEO of We Engauge. In announcing the venture, Chan said, Engauge is a leader in leveraging social media marketing for brands in the United States. Our management team has worked with blue chip brands in China for two decades and understands the unique social media platforms here. Together, we make a winning team, creating new tools and creative campaigns to help clients break new ground and achieve optimum business results.

Milenthal will serve as Vice Chairman of the new agency. Hugo Chan, a renowned leader in the China media industry and author of "Social Marketing: Customer's Engagement" will serve as Managing Partner. Raghu Kakarala, Engauge Chief Technology Officer, will serve as CTO and partner of We Engauge. The agency will work closely with WMG and will share offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.

Engauge and the WMG management team already have strong ties as mutual shareholders of Worldwide Partners, the worlds largest network of independent agencies. I have watched Viveca grow her agency in China over the last 5 years into the countrys leading independent. We are honored to have an opportunity to partner with her on this great venture, said Rick Milenthal.

Al Moffatt, Worldwide Partners President/CEO said, Both WE and Engauge are agency partners in Worldwide Partners, the worlds largest network of independent agencies. The creation of this new social media agency in China through these two partner agencies is just one more example of the power of global connectivity and collaboration among agencies that are part of Worldwide Partners. I have every confidence that WE Engauge will be a social media ground-breaker in China and will be very successful.

Engauge is working on partnerships in Taiwan, Tokyo, London and Sao Paulo to create the first-ever international social media agency.

With WE Engauge, our clients will be able to leverage social media in greater China and throughout the world, said Viveca Chan. No one else in China is leveraging local knowledge with worldwide access like we do.

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WE Engauge Formed to Become Leading Social Marketing Agency in China