4 better mouse traps to build social media promotions

 
 


Social media promotions are events like sweepstakes, contests and coupons that take place on a brand’s social network sites, especially Facebook.  They center on attracting attention, engagement and sharing. They drive traffic to a brand’s website and create greater brand involvement.
Since social media promotions require participants to give an email address and often physical address. They are excellent events for building email lists and databases. Many generate significant sales.
Any business with a social presence can do one because costs begin as low as $9.99 a month; To run one, an app is installed on a Brand’s Facebook page or a widget on a website.
If this sounds like it might be of interest for your brand, the first step is to choose the right app for the task. Here are the 4 better mouse traps to build social media promotions (with pros and cons):
1. OFFERPOP: Scalable to serve any organizations, offerpop bases its pricing around the size of your Facebook Fan base. It goes from $10/month for businesses with 100-500 “Likes” to $675/month for brands with 25,000-50,000. Offerpop offers:

• Campaign Builder that includes instant landing pages and built-in reports along with a growing number of social marketing apps.
• Marketing integration where companies can socially-enable their email marketing campaigns, website or advertising programs; and track all results in real time.
• “Fan Gating” (optional) which means consumer have to “Like” your Facebook page before they can proceed to the offer
• Advanced social analytics where two new tools are a Facebook post database, which shows what kinds of content is driving engagement, virality, and clicks, and a fan database, which helps you build rich profiles of your Facebook fans and enriches them over time.The tools not only tell you that the post last week about Brad Pitt’s graying hair resonated well, but also that all your posts that reference aging movie stars generally go viral. And with about three clicks, you can generate a list of your fans — and non-fans — who are responsive to similar messages.

 
SocialTimes says: The ideal Offerpop customer is an internet or multi-channel retailer, such as Kobo, PokerStars and The Body Shop, looking to add fans and followers, build brand engagement and grow sales using Twitter and Facebook. They are often doing email marketing and online ad buys and looking to boost campaign performance by adding a social component. And they generally like to experiment and run frequent campaigns and create programs that look good and are brand friendly.
IS OFFERPOP FOR YOU? If pay-as-you-scale is attractive and you want to integrate other channels, offerpop is great choice. Plus, offerpop has the most sophisticated social analytics. One disadvantage is offerpop is the only company that doesn’t offer call-in customer support.
2. STRUTTA: A platform that is DIY-oriented and good for the non-technical, Strutta’s Contest Builder can create and manage a contest campaign as a sweepstakes or user generated content promotion without development resources. Strutta offer monthly subscription packages from $99 to $199. Multiple brand promotions can be created or tested within the month as long as they occur from the same social network pages and website. For enterprise clients and agencies, there is Pro Package for $12,000/year with advanced features and mandatory “Likes.” It offer a “Complete Social Suite.” Strutta advantages are:

• Dashboard allows the contest organizer to manage all contest activity and communication.
• Users are able to make photo contest submissions from their existing Facebook photo albums, their hard drive or their mobile device; in a video contest, users are able to submit videos from their YouTube account, their hard drive or their mobile.
• Google Analytics code can be added to the platform, even a conversion tracker to measures ROI on top of existing engagement metrics. Brands can define conversion goals, such a contestant hitting the check out page, and map contest activity (visits, entries, votes, comments) against those goals.

 
IS STRUTTA FOR YOU? The DIYer advantage is great for first timers and businesses with limited resources. The mobile advantages and Google Analytics integration are big benefits.
WOOBOX: Has 1,000,000+ brands that use its apps on Facebook such as Starbucks, Sam’s Club, Nordstrom, Warner Bros., Wendy’s, A&P, Quiznos, Jiffy Lube, Cold Stone Creamery, and many others, including small, mom-and-pop businesses. The Woobox app is Free to install and can be used to direct fans to your website if a goal to drive involvement, sales or let consumers know about deals. To create sweepstakes, contests and coupons and to participate in “Fan Gating” where consumers must “Like” your brand on Facebook to participate, Woobox offers plans from $1/month for 100 “Fan Gating” to $249/month for >100,000 Fans. Woobox offers coupon apps, sweepstakes apps, static HTML tab apps for Facebook and Pinterest apps (including a new “Pin to Win” app). Woobox has unique social sharing advantages. For example, for coupon sharing, it

• Allows you to limit your coupons to your Facebook and Twitter followers
• Offers “Group Deals” where a minimum amount of people must complete the offer before the offer is valid for the group
• Requires sharing with Facebook or Twitter friends to get the coupon
• Set limits to how many coupons you want to offer

Based in Portland, Woobox is a bootstrapped, profitable team of four, and is not interested in outside funding at this time.

IS WOOBOX FOR YOU? The free installation of the Woobox app is an easy way to find out. If social media promotion are going to be a mainstay of your social media arsenal and growing “Likes” is important, Woobox is the most sophisticated number of choices.
WILDFIRE: is the company that started the social media promotion craze. Wildfire, too, was once a bootstrapped start-up, until acquired by Google in July 2012 for $250,000,000 to substantiate social media promotions are here to stay. Wildfire charges on a per campaign basis, and offers a “self-serve” Promotion Builder that include a set-up charge and per day rate with different graphic capabilities. The packages are:

• Standard: $25 Set Up plus $2.99/day 
• Premium: $250 Set Up plus $4.99/day

Wildfire’s “White Label” product provide access to the developers and strategists that take your promotion to a superior level of customization and execution and pricing that goes upward from $3,500+. Google announced they are going to “sunset” or discontinue their Promotion Builder as of June 30, 2013 and move to White Label services with a strategist. This program begins at $2,500/month.
IS WILDFIRE FOR YOU? Wildfire, under Google, is moving to an enterprise solution. If your business fits in this category, Wildfire is a tried-and-true solution.
BarnRaisers has used Wildfire for years. We’re sorry to see them discontinue their Promotion Builder but wish them the best. They are a great company to do business with.
We also like North Social and Heyo and will cover them in a future blog post because, as Google has demonstrated, social media promotions are here to stay.
Which of these better mouse traps might be best for your business? Are there any others that should be included? Do you think social media promotions could boost your business?