Mediaboss Marketing

PromoJam, a social marketing platform for the enterprise that allows businesses to create campaigns across Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Myspace, has raised $1.2 million in Series A funding, the company is announcing today. The round was led by NYC-based Golden Seeds, and included participation from Band of Angels.

The L.A.-based company, which was started in 2008 by brother and sister team Matt MacNaughton (CEO) Amanda MacNaughton (Chief Marketing Officer), has grown over the years, now having served its social promotions to over 10 million users. Some of the companys clients includeNBC Universal, Clear Channel Radio, Hearst Publications, HitFix, Rock The Vote, Expedia, Avon, Warner Brothers Music Group, BlackBerry, Paramount Pictures, The North Face, and Rihanna.

According to co-founder Amanda MacNaughton, the platform stands out from the rest because of its cross-platform capability that lets clients run promotions both online and on mobile across the various networks it supports.

We have been building the business and our exciting client list relatively quietly, says Amanda. And its true you often hear of PromoJam in the greater context of the promotion being run, not the news about the company itself. For example, whenwe covered news ofdrummerTravis Barkerand turntablistDJ-AM(Adam Goldstein), who, back in 2009, were offering their then just-released second mixtape, Fix Your Face Vol. 2 Coachella 09, for free in exchange for a tweet, that came from PromoJam.

And when we covered Pearl Jams use of Twitter to promote their new song Just Breathe back in early 2010, that, too, was PromoJams work.

More recently, the company teamed withJunk Food Clothing and Saks Fifth Avenue on a social QR code campaign, where QR code images were used as part of a charity fundraising effort for St. Vincent Meals on Wheels Foundation.

Some ongoing promotions now include those for NBAs Dwight Howard (Facebook and Twitter), Rock the Vote (mobile), E! Entertainment, and L.A.s FOX 11 News.

With the platform, which is available both as a DIY solution or one that can be customized by PromoJam according to a businesss needs, PromoJam clients can create campaigns including sweepstakes, Facebook Like campaigns, coupon giveaways, flash sales, download promotions and more, while running those efforts simultaneouslyacross social networks, blogs, mobile phones, via QR codes, and via SMS text messages. If the content really goes viral, PromoJams scalable technology can handle the heavy load, while also helping its businesses collect customers information, like email addresses, for example, and track related analytics.

On the back-end, the company provides real-time reporting in a dashboard that shows the number of posts, increased fans and followers, clicks, shares, emails collected and other data, including the geographic locations of the programs participants to help businesses target key influencers and outreach efforts.

Amanda tells us the new investment will help the company expand the marketing software itself specifically, PromoJam will be adding support for more social network integrations in 2012, and the company plans to grow its sales and marketing departments, too.

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Social Marketing Platform PromoJam Raises $1.2M From Golden Seeds, Band Of Angels

As more companies in heavily regulated industries search for cost savings, greater efficiencies for dollars spent, and better matches with modern sources of information, they are aggressively shifting dollars from traditional advertising to digital and social media. These industries - which include pharmaceuticals and healthcare, financial services and insurance, alcohol and tobacco, and those that service government entities - have regulations that govern their marketing and communications, especially ones aimed at large numbers of consumers.

Compliance has always been a necessary extra step in doing marketing. Now, in digital and social media, where customers' actions, conversations, and feedback are visible and recorded publicly, these companies have the additional task of figuring out which regulations apply, and how.

It's not just one regulation or law that has yet to be interpreted for two-way digital channels, but many, and some are easier to apply than others. For example, sites created by companies and agencies serving government entities must be "508 compliant," meaning that they must be accessible to people with disabilities - through the use of screen readers, for example. Companies in healthcare and insurance need to ensure that their technology infrastructure, record-keeping, and privacy policies are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

Public companies are subject to Sarbanes-Oxley and the associated requirements for disclosures, internal controls, and accountability. Pharmaceutical and healthcare companies must also abide by the Food and Drug Administration's requirements for "adverse event reporting" and other regulations that govern the adequate disclosure of safety and warning information, the presentation of "fair" and "balanced" information about prescription drugs and medical device, and what can or cannot be said or claimed about products (i.e., approved language only).

Why are these regulations and requirements challenging for marketers in digital, search, and social channels? The laws themselves are not new, but the interpretation of how to apply them is. In traditional forms of advertising, the guidelines are well established - for example, in TV commercials for drugs, companies must refer customers to the corresponding print ad in a magazine for further details. When advertising a product on a website, companies must link to the prescribing information (PI), which has all of the required details about dosage, side effects, adverse interactions, black-box warnings, etc.

But what happens when companies run search ads on Google or display ads on Facebook? How should they present warnings and side-effect information, given the extreme space constraints of the ads themselves? What should firms do when people write negative comments about their drugs or mention on social networks that they got sick from the drugs (i.e., "adverse events")? Are companies obliged to monitor the entire Internet or all social networks, blogs, and forums, and report all mentions of adverse events related to their products? And how could they possibly do so in the stipulated 72 hours?

Finally, what are the rules governing the new forms of personally identifiable information (PII) disclosed in digital and social channels - for example, the history of what sites individuals visited, the "social graph" of their connected friends, and what they searched for online - and how companies can use this PII to better target customers with marketing messages? Because the FDA has not published any definitive guidelines or interpretations for these new marketing scenarios, companies are forced to assess and interpret these scenarios themselves and act according to the level of acceptable risk.

However, many companies have taken the wait-and-see approach and deferred any action in these new and essential marketing channels.

Here are a few examples of ways companies in these regulated industries can use digital, search, and social media marketing techniques right now, while staying within the "compliance envelope":

Social media listening. Marketers can treat social media channels as venues for continuous listening rather than as places where they can push more ads. Because more people are having more online conversations more often, social media venues are rich sources of new insights that cannot be gleaned from traditional forms of market research like surveys or focus groups. Furthermore, in some cases these conversations have been archived for years, giving advertisers a historic perspective on particular topics.

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Search Marketing and Social Media in Regulated Industries

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Wildfire, the global leader in social media marketing software, today announced that over 13,000 paying customers are using its Social Marketing Suite, making it the largest social media marketing platform in the world. The Wildfire Platform has powered over 200,000 social marketing campaigns. More than half of the world's top 50 most valuable brands, including Facebook itself, use the Wildfire platform to engage with audiences across the mobile and social web.

2011 was a year of explosive growth for the company. Last year, Wildfire grew its revenue by 300 percent, while maintaining strong margins, and expanded the team to over 300 employees worldwide by March of 2012. With new offices in London, Paris, Munich, and Singapore, the company also grew its international business by 500 percent, with more than 24 percent of the company's revenue now coming from outside the U.S. Last year, Wildfire was named one of the Top 50 Best Startups by TiE and was also ranked as one of the top 250 global private companies by AlwaysOn.

The company's growth has been fueled in large part by the exceptional results brands achieve with Wildfire, which has led to significant repeat business and strong organic customer growth. On average, Wildfire customers gain a 3x increase in fan growth rate while working with Wildfire. With 300 new subscription clients in the last 6 months of 2011, Wildfire is adding mid- and enterprise-level customers at a faster rate than any direct competitor.

Employee satisfaction and retention rates have also contributed to the company's growth in today's competitive tech hiring climate: in 2011 and 2012, Wildfire was named one of the top 10 best places to work by the San Francisco Business Times, and is currently ranked in the top 1% of best places to work in the U.S. by Glassdoor.com.

New technology innovations have also played a substantial role in the company's growth over the past year. In July of 2011, the company introduced its Social Marketing Suite, integrating best-of-breed social promotion software, robust page management, messaging and sophisticated real-time analytics into one complete platform. In early 2012, the company expanded its offerings to include mobile Facebook marketing, and most recently, through partnership with Adaptly, Wildfire integrated ad buying and ad optimization capabilities into its Social Marketing Suite, enabling organizations to drive greater return on their paid, owned and earned media. Last month, founder and CEO Victoria Ransom was named a TechFellow by the Founders Fund, NEA and TechCrunch, for outstanding technology leadership and innovation.

"Social media has evolved from a stand-alone channel to one that permeates every marketing program. As brands continue to integrate social into all their marketing programs, they will need sophisticated, enterprise-grade software like Wildfire's to successfully manage and optimize every customer interaction," said Victoria Ransom, founder and CEO of Wildfire. "With our continued technology innovation, our strong customer base and our outstanding team, Wildfire is extremely well-positioned to further scale the business in the coming years."

About Wildfire

Wildfire is the global leader in social media marketing software, with over 13,000 paying customers worldwide, including 30 of the world's 50 most valuable brands. Wildfire's Social Marketing Suite combines best-of-breed social promotion and advertising software, robust mobile and desktop page management, messaging and sophisticated real-time analytics in one complete platform. Wildfire's powerful and intuitive software allows creative marketers and non-technical managers alike to create social campaigns and pages, communicate with their social audience and measure social media performance. Brands and agencies such as Facebook, Virgin, Amazon, Target and Ogilvy as well as thousands of small businesses use the Wildfire platform to engage with audiences on major social networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The only social media marketing company to receive an investment from Facebook's fbFund, Wildfire has offices in California, Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Munich, and Singapore. For more information, please visit http://www.wildfireapp.com.

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Wildfire, the World's Largest Provider of Social Media Marketing Solutions, Reports Record Growth

20-03-2012 15:46 Collaborate, Network & Learn: Social Marketing Summit by Dominion Enterprises. Press Releases: Melissa James from Business Wire.

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Collaborate, Network

San FranciscoAon Corp. and CenturyLink Business were social media marketing headliners at BtoB's third annual Social Media Marketing Awards, held here today as part of the BtoB Digital Edge Live conference. Both topped their categories in People's Choice Awards balloting as the top b2b social media marketing programs of the year, joining a lineup of award winners in a variety of social media segments.

Aon took honors in the tech company category for its Pass It On program. Its mandateto find a way to share knowledge and create a sense of common purpose that transcended geographic and cultural boundariesled to a contest challenging employee teams in three regions to compete on their knowledge, creativity and teamwork, then share the best results with customers and prospects.

Teams earned points for such actions as answering a daily question, uploading Aon-related videos and photos, and sharing details of local events with a scoreboard, AonPassItOn.com, keeping track of their progress.

Uptake has been high, with more than 400,000 questions answered in the first three months. Engagement with external audiences is also up dramatically on Facebook, Twitter and the host website.

CenturyLink Business won its People's Choice award in the nontech company category for its Ultimate Problem Solver program. Knowing that its technology-oriented customers enjoy challenges and puzzles, the company created an interactive, 50-stage trivia game that rewarded players who worked through a series of increasingly challenging clues.

UltimateProblemSolver.com presented players with puzzles they must solve to unlock passwords that lead them to the next level in the game. Some answers involve Web research or digging through CenturyLink marketing material. Players were encouraged to interact and share their experiences.

Over an eight-month period, almost 90,000 people played the game and 46,000 registered on the site, giving CenturyLink a valuable well of leads. About 17,000 players answered all 50 questions.

Other People's Choice finalists included Corning Inc. for its A Day Made of Glass social campaign; Hobart Corp., for Get Back to Scratch; IBM, for Information on Demand; and Ultimate Software, for LinkedIn Engagement Initiative.

Visit BtoBonline.com for a full listing of the companies honored during BtoB's Social Media Marketing Awards.

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'BtoB's' Social Media Marketing Awards: Aon, CenturyLink grab People's Choice honors