Crowd Factory, a software as a service company focused on social marketing tools, recently introduced a new function for their Social Offer service that enables quick creation of landing pages for group deals and social campaigns on the web and Facebook. This rounds out their suite of “crowd-powered marketing apps" already in use at a number of major music companies.
The cost of Social Offer is not low, starting at $1500 a month, but that's still less than a programmer would charge. Think of it as a corporate DIY offering for marketing departments that, as Crowd Factory puts it, feel the need to bypass the IT department. Music industry customers have included Sony Music, Universal Music Group, MTV, Jive, Billboard and Island Def Jam.
Crowd Factory's Social Offer allows you to set up group-buying opportunities that can be presented as social games. So you can create a special deal that might be made available only to customers who recruit a certain number of friends which brings a game element into a discount offering.
For example, Social Offer was used to power a recent campaign for Britney Spears' Femme Fatale in which fans who got a certain number of people to participate got a discount as opposed to a Groupon deal which is unlocked for all those involved:
“Using social media to spread the word, Crowd Factory created a campaign that enabled fans to share and post about the new album on Facebook and Twitter. After sharing with 10 friends, each fan could get a 20% discount on the album. In the first 3 days, Social Campaign delivered 31% of all traffic to Britney.com as a result of the social visits from fans sharing."
Other customer case studies include campaigns for Parachute, on Island Def Jam, and for Hot Chelle Rae, on Sony Music.
That's not to say you couldn't use their service to do a more “traditional" daily deal or similar offering but they seem to have developed a sophisticated suite of services at this point, including social media marketing and analytics tools, that allows one to experiment without getting locked into a limited template. If you're interested in getting a closer look, there's a “How to Deploy Group Deals and Social Offers" Webinar focused on their services.
Though Crowd Factory's offerings are pretty much out of the range of most indie music marketers, I believe we'll see more and more such services that will be available at a lower price point. Then again, I'm still amazed at how difficult it can sometimes be to find simple workable solutions for basic problems.
Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. Flux Research is his business writing hub and All World Dance is his primary web project.
The cost of Social Offer is not low, starting at $1500 a month, but that's still less than a programmer would charge. Think of it as a corporate DIY offering for marketing departments that, as Crowd Factory puts it, feel the need to bypass the IT department. Music industry customers have included Sony Music, Universal Music Group, MTV, Jive, Billboard and Island Def Jam.
Crowd Factory's Social Offer allows you to set up group-buying opportunities that can be presented as social games. So you can create a special deal that might be made available only to customers who recruit a certain number of friends which brings a game element into a discount offering.
For example, Social Offer was used to power a recent campaign for Britney Spears' Femme Fatale in which fans who got a certain number of people to participate got a discount as opposed to a Groupon deal which is unlocked for all those involved:
“Using social media to spread the word, Crowd Factory created a campaign that enabled fans to share and post about the new album on Facebook and Twitter. After sharing with 10 friends, each fan could get a 20% discount on the album. In the first 3 days, Social Campaign delivered 31% of all traffic to Britney.com as a result of the social visits from fans sharing."
Other customer case studies include campaigns for Parachute, on Island Def Jam, and for Hot Chelle Rae, on Sony Music.
That's not to say you couldn't use their service to do a more “traditional" daily deal or similar offering but they seem to have developed a sophisticated suite of services at this point, including social media marketing and analytics tools, that allows one to experiment without getting locked into a limited template. If you're interested in getting a closer look, there's a “How to Deploy Group Deals and Social Offers" Webinar focused on their services.
Though Crowd Factory's offerings are pretty much out of the range of most indie music marketers, I believe we'll see more and more such services that will be available at a lower price point. Then again, I'm still amazed at how difficult it can sometimes be to find simple workable solutions for basic problems.
Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. Flux Research is his business writing hub and All World Dance is his primary web project.
