The Crowd Factory Blog

One of our coolest customers, Outspark recently launched 3 new awesome looking campaigns, check these out!: Fiesta Online: Adealia Launch Trailer Refer your friends to 7Dragons! Call of Gods – Free Hero Recuiting Package

HOT OFF THE PRESSES!  The following was announced great news from 2011 and we look forward to a great 2012! Growing Demand for Crowd Factory’s Social Campaign Management Platform in FY2011 Highlights Value of Social Campaigns In Acquiring New Customers and Building Brand Awareness SAN FRANCISCO, CA – February 2, 2012 – Crowd Factory, the [...]

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We here at Crowd Factory typically spend most of our day beaming with pride about the power of our social media applications, CRM and analytics – but there is more to us than just our platform. We want our customers and colleagues to understand the social media websites they use so they get the most [...]

The release of the first Hunger Games film, based on of the wildly successful book trilogy, is less than two months away, but the powers that be are teasing fans with various marketing gems via social media sites. The latest installment — which was released this week — is a high-fashion site called Capitol Couture, [...]

Crowd Factory is honored to have launched the first campaigns with the leader in Marketing Automation, Marketo.  Check out this super cool video with a surprise ending! Marketing Automation In Action: A View From Mission Control: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see how Marketo can lift off your marketing automation programs. [...]

For the first time in U.S. history, marketers are projected to spend more on online advertising than on advertising in print magazines and newspapers. According to a study released Thursday by eMarketer, online advertising is expected to generate $39.5 billion in sales this year — a 23.3% increase from 2011 — compared to a spend [...]

If you have not heard the buzz around the social media water cooler yet, you will soon!  The story came out yesterday and Crowd Factory has been seeing headlines all over the newsroom about our story: One of our favorite customers, PR Newswire shares data that Press Releases Shared More on Facebook, But Twitter Drives [...]

By Kelly Jo Horton One of the most frequent requests I hear from customers is, “I want more Likes on Facebook. How do I get more Likes?” What is a Like worth anyway? Likes were originally conceived to give brand fans a way to publicly declare their love and their loyalty to you, but their [...]

How goes it Social Fans!  Crowd Factory’s blog has been feeling a bit lonely as we have been having to spend a lot of time working with new customers, developing new products and gearing up for the end of 2011 (is that even possible…yes it is!).  In the interim, we have been reading some amazing [...]

By Kelly Jo Horton The Interactive Media Peer Group is the fastest growing peer group in the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), which is no surprise to those of us in the business of interactive. There are 450 active members of the Interactive Media Peer Group, and I am proud to say I [...]

Crowd Factory would like to let our fans and follows know about another great campaign launched by our new customer, and this time it is getting down to business!  In the last few months Crowd Factory has  seen great success in the music industry, but our reach within different industries is growing fast.  After a [...]

We’ve been working really hard at Crowd Factory all summer long to build a number of exciting new features and updates to create the most powerful Social Marketing Software Suite – that actually works! Check out the new datasheet! Crowd Factory Social Marketing Datasheet View more documents from Crowd Factory Get crowd-powered and have the [...]

Hello Crowd Factory fans! Here is a sample of the new emails campaign from a Crowd Factory favorite customer, Molson Coors. The social email campaign is sending out that combine traditional brand messaging with social interactions. In addition to the email copy, there are multiple calls-to-action that drive users to landing pages with Social Campaign [...]

Social sharing is going in for its closeup! The new film titled ‘Abduction’ starring Taylor Lautner and Lily Collins is another great campaign from Lionsgate Films, in part, Socially Powered by Crowd Factory!   The film premieres in theaters September 23, 2011 (and was mainly shot on location in the hometown of our own Michael Findling, [...]

Small companies – at least in the CRM software related world – and that means social software world, in this case, too – abound. There are thousands of companies out there that are possibly innovative, possibly commercially viable in a big way, possibly the next big thing. This past week Crowd Factory went up for [...]

The following was written by Crowd Factory’s own Shaun Rosenstein! The traditional digital acquisition funnel is difficult to navigate, filled with multiple opportunities for traffic drop-off. When successfully completed, it ends abruptly for users. Marketers invest countless hours honing in on their target demographic using psychographic profiling, behavioral data, contextual placement and innumerable analytics to [...]

Everyone is getting back into the swing of educational things this week.  With the economic uncertainty floating around these days Crowd Factory is very proud to be working with a company that not only embraces social ecommerce and social media marketing, but is helping students save where possible! A customer favorite of ours, Bookrenter.com, was [...]

To say that Crowd Factory has been busy over the last several months is an understatement.  Despite all that has been happening in the news, with economic turmoil and world events, there has been no shortage of good news from our offices. Today CEO Sanjay Dholakia and Founder Alex Mouldovan gave a briefing on our [...]

A few weeks ago Crowd Factory was honored to welcome a new team member to our Customer Success team: Kelly Jo Horton.  Kelly has been such a ray of sunshine into the Crowd Factory family.  She comes with the most youthful of spirits, yet has accomplished more than most in a lifetime! Kelly has a [...]

Crowd Factory is in a weird spot at times.  There are times our customers do things like…oh I don’t know, debut their new book at #1 on Amazon.  When this happens we have a hard time not beaming with pride.  This was a tough week as Ryan Blair’s book, “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain” [...]

A few weeks ago the Crowd Factory batphone rang and a very insightful journalist by the name of David F. Carr called to ask if he can interview Crowd Factory CEO Sanjay Dholakia during Jive’s annoucnement of their new App Market, which includes our Social Offer platform.  Below is an excerpt from the article published [...]

By the Editors of CRM magazine Posted Jul 20, 2011 The following companies may lack the illuminating glow of the more established players in today’s marketplace. A few may even have little to no name recognition. However, this year’s CRM Rising Stars have a promising sparkle that is worth a double take. This group of [...]

The people have spoken…at Hypebot.com and it would seem we are a hit!  A new article came out today from Clyde Smith regarding the recent article published by Crowd Factory CEO Sanjay Dholakia.   Buzz around the concept of encouraging teens to become superfans who will broadcast your message beyond the level of basic participation. These [...]

It has been great to see that the popularity of the new Jive Apps Market has given some welcomed positive feedback related to Crowd Factory’s Social Offer.  Below is an excerpt, and link, of an article by David F. Carr of the BrainYard at InformationWeek.com. Jive gathers Apps Market partners to discuss creating consumer quality [...]

It is a wonderful feeling to know there is a growing buzz about Crowd Factory, our product updates have been wildly successful, attention from the press has been positive and our CEO Sanjay Dholakia has written some wildly successful bylines.  Check out the latest published in MediaPost today.  Teens are natural marketers: they are extremely [...]

Interscope Geffen Records has launched their first Crowd Factory sweepstakes! Win a trip to see Rye Rye perform live in LA with Katy Perry and Robyn.  Hurry, the campaign ends Friday (http://www.ryeryemusic.com/sweeps)! “Pop is a big genre. Hip-hop is a big genre. But I also want to stay in my lane and get the feeling [...]

Application Allows Marketers to Instantly Create Social Campaigns & Promotions with Built-In Analytics SAN FRANCISCO, July 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Crowd Factory, the leader in crowd-powered marketing applications, today announced the introduction of its Social Offer app for Jive 5, the social business leading platform. Available now to Jive customers, Social Offer will be featured [...]

Jive Unveils Industry’s First Social Enterprise Apps Market at Exclusive Event PALO ALTO, Calif., July 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Jive Software announced today that its CEO Tony Zingale, joined by several executives from Jive and the industry, will lead an exclusive thought-leadership gathering on Wednesday, July 27 in San Francisco. The participants will discuss the [...]

This past week Crowd Factory faced a very interesting customer challenge that had a very tight deadline.   Below is one person’s view of what happened, our very own insightful Intern Forrest Greene. One of my favorite commercials is a Coors Light ad when clips of former NFL coach Herm Edwards are used when he shouts [...]

Miami-bred rap star (as well as Crowd Factory customer) Pitbull talks to the WSJ’s Lee Hawkins about how he’s leveraging his popularity as a rapper to score sponsorship deals and the changing business model in the music industry. In a music industry plagued by dwindling concert tour and CD sales, Armando Christian Perez, known widely [...]

Molson Coors Leverages Social Campaign With Red Leaf Community Project Molson Coors recently partnered with Tree Canada, World Wildlife Fund, and Evergreen to develop a socially conscious promotional program; the Molson Canadian Red Leaf Project organized 350 Molson Coors employees at eight separate locations across Canada to plant close to 100,000 trees. In a solid [...]

There are many events that could take place on a Wednesday afternoon, here is one of the sweetest: Online Social Media writes a glowing article about your work.  Below is an excerpt and a post from our SlideShare library of an article written by Debbie Turner of Online Social Media.  This piece was based on [...]

This morning  there was a team meeting held about some new features coming to Crowd Factory’s Social Offer product.  After that meeting our friend and summer intern Forrest Greene gave us some of his own thoughts and feedback on his experience so far – it was quite interesting to hear this from a fresh set [...]

When I joined Crowd Factory 4 months ago I took pride in that I was writing a new blog post on a weekly basis. In the last six weeks that has been next to impossible for me to create witty banter that is funny unless that banter looked like this: <div class=”right column” style=”awesome”> Crowd [...]

Crowd Factory is a strong advocate for sharing information through social media channels in order for consumers, students, people in general get the most out of their online experiences.  It is such a pleasure to work with customers that do the same!  Take a look at this quick yet very effective video from our friend [...]

Crowd Factory takes great pride in that we only power the coolest of social media campaigns.  This week is no exception when we joined the launch of Big Sean‘s debut album Finally Famous.  Fans of Big Sean can win free goodies like signed posters, Big Sean t-shirts from Adidas and hats from Ti$A – and [...]

Last week Crowd Factory was honored to have met our new summer intern, Forrest Greene.  We have immensely enjoyed having Forrest’s young energy here in the San Francisco offices.  Anxious to learn, happy to help with anything and always in an great mood.   We thought you’d like to get to know our new friend…read on! [...]

A great article from our fan and loyal supporter Lee Odden of Top Rank Blog!  Just a quick excerpt and we hope you’ll check out his full post, a lot of great information and a very in-depth review of the webinar:  Driving Social Media & Customer Acquisition Throughout the Customer Lifecycle By Lee Odden June [...]

It has been an amazing few months for CrowdFactory in San Francisco and the summer is just heating up. Not only have articles have been written on our social offer and media success in the music industry but we also we hosted a webinar with thought leader, Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group. Did you [...]

Driving Social Media & Customer Acquisition Throughout The Customer Lifecycle Date: June, 28, 2011 Time: 10:00 a.m. Pacific | 1:00 p.m. Eastern With guest and thought leader, Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group! Watch Now! Learn how marketers are using social media to engage customers and prospects across the entire lifecycle.  Successful marketers today have realized [...]

Check out Crowd Factory’s CEO Sanjay Dholakia view of the Social Media Landscape in 2011. This is one person’s view on the industry in 7 pieces – lucky 7, and after watching this you will wonder how you ever made it through social meda with out us! The Networks Listening Social Media Management Facebook Applications [...]

We’re having so much fun, this should be a crime.  We wanted to let you know about three awesome campaigns that have recently launched from our customers.  Not only do we think working on these are fun, we want to spread the wealth to you! There are two great new campaigns from our friends at [...]

Crowd Factory is unique in that the group in both San Francisco and Portland has Social Media in our DNA – we live and breathe the art and science that is the digital experience. If you are looking to change or in our humble opinion improve your career path take a look at the open [...]

Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (a key investor in Crowd Factory) is proud to announce the appointment last week of Mark Gorenberg to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). PCAST is an advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers who directly advise the President and the Executive Office of the [...]

Driving Social Media & Customer Acquisition Throughout The Customer Lifecycle With guest and thought leader, Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group! Date: June, 28, 2011 Time: 10:00 a.m. Pacific | 1:00 p.m. Eastern Register today! Learn how marketers are using social media to engage customers and prospects across the entire lifecycle.  Successful marketers today have realized [...]

It has been a busy couple of months for us here at Crowd Factory since I last sent you an update! Since we have had so much happening and have had a steady stream of stories, I thought I would bundle together a few highlights here in the social sphere at the same time.   [...]

The best kind of flattery comes when you least expect it.  Today was no exception.  The alarm bells went off at Crowd Factory today, not because someone broke-in, but apparently we are breaking out baby!  Check out this great article about how Crowd Factory is taking the social offer and music world by storm. Crowd [...]

To our friends and followers of Crowd Factory, the following was published by the highly regarded website Social Media Examiner.  The team here at Crowd Factory universally thought the article was extremely informational and interesting.  In the end a number of us looked at each other across the conference room table and pretty much agreed [...]

I have been thinking lately that it is becoming more of a challenge for me to come up with new and fun ideas to write about –but not that is not the reason I have been unable to write in the Crowd Factory blog in the last few weeks. We have not only been working [...]

Since the term “Facebook page” was introduced to the social media lexicon there has been a quest similar to the fountain of youth about how best to create, manage, implement and design such page.  Typically it has been a mixture of working with the marketing group, coming up with something COOL and FUN and then [...]

Hot Chelle Rae, from Sony Music, announce themselves as a force to be reckoned with on their debut album Lovesick Electric. How can you argue with bold, swaggering vocals, monster sing-along choruses, crunching rock guitar, and a propulsive rhythm section that just won’t quit?  And now, they are powered by Crowd Factory’s Social Campaign power. [...]

"According to data from Crowd Factory, whose technology powers social sharing functionality on PRNewswire.com, press releases that are shared bring an average of six people back to the site to view the release." By Leyl Master Black of Mashable.com There was an awesome article on Mashable.com this morning by one of our favorite writers, Leyl [...]

Unless you have been living in a cave or under a rock (which is ironically where we all thought the following would end) then you have heard the countless tales, debates and conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden. I will do my best to keep politics and religion out of this post.  [...]

We like to help our customers reach their Social Media Marketing goals.  If you help this Middle Brother video reach 1000 views you would be entered to win a number of different prizes from the band, like T-shirts, CD and more!  Visit the website and share the video with friends and loved ones on Twitter, [...]

This is why we get to have a lot more fun than our friends at work.  Who said that Social Media Analytics and Social Media Marketing were not all fun and games?  Well, it depends on the day, but mostly we say YES!  Especially when our customers have headlines that read like this: 100 lucky [...]

As the Crowd Factory family grows, so does our video library.  A number of our friends, customers and colleagues have said “Crowd Factory looks AWESOME, can we see how it works, what goes into it….something fun, something cool?!?”  Well here is the first in the series, a quick overview of Social Campaign and Social Offer: [...]

Today we heard that Gleanster is conducting a survey, and with the results will publish a benchmark report on Social Media Marketing.  Take a few minutes at the end of your day, check it out and you might just win a new iPad!   The authors of this upcoming report include Scott Wilder, former SVP of [...]

In further proof the sharing power of Social Campaign gives Crowd Factory customers the most powerful social media tools ever, PostRank.com reported on the number of times a press release was shared on social networks.   Crowd Factory is proud to say that the #1 wire service is our very own customer PR Newswire, they were [...]

I was honored to have spent yesterday in Portland, Oregon where I witnessed one of the coolest events in my professional career (which includes five years in Training & Development). I left the offices with this feeling that most people who use the internet (and I admit I am in this bucket), do not fully [...]

What a week, and yes, only Tuesday. Tomorrow morning my colleague Alexander Shyshko will pick me up at 5:30 in order to fly up to the other side of my universe – otherwise known at Crowd Factory Portland. Those offices are filled different kind of creative genius, imagination and brilliance as compared to that of [...]

If you woke up this morning thinking “if I could only read 543 words and find a really cool surprise at the end”, well then this is the post for you.  Keep going! When I moved from New York City to San Francisco in May of 2008 I had no assumptions about the weather in [...]

How to Deploy Group Deals and Social Offers Date: Thursday, April 28, 2011 Time: 11:00 a.m. Pacific | 2:00 p.m. Eastern Register today! Join us to learn how to build and deploy group deals with your own "Groupon for the Enterprise".   This webinar is the quickest way to learn how to run winning social offers. [...]

I’m Jewish, there I said it.  A team trip to Portland was delayed next week because of Passover, a holiday that asks at least four questions.  So, it begs one question, what if Moses had Foursquare while wondering the desert for 40 years?  Would the public perceived him as lost?  That could have looked very [...]

Crowd Factory is doing some spring cleaning this week and organizing some items of the house, which includes where we have been found in the news.   One thing we have been noticing is the increased awareness of the importance of measuring the true impact of social media marketing.  Personally I have been noticing the steady [...]

I am trying to pinpoint the exact date of one the most physically exhausting (yet rewarding and life changing) days of my life (so far). I woke up at 5am in Boston, Delta Shuttle to New York for a day of 5 interviews in 9 hours.  The day saw 3 companies, 2 recruiters and 265 [...]

The following is going to seem like a a stretch – though most of what I think about riding the bus home is anyway.  Crowd Factory helped to fuel a campaign to increase blood donations for the Red Cross Blood Drive during this past winter.  The social media campaign leveraged our badging capabilities in Social [...]

I am going to put an image of the 80’s in your head and embarrass myself at the same time:  When I was 6 years old my father was going to give me away to some unknown organization because I forced him to go to the movie theater and watch Return of the Jedi nearly [...]

This morning I posted a speech that I gave at my wedding in February 2011 on my own personal blog .  It was inspired by a number of experiences and people, including Mozart and Beethoven (who have been a strong influence on my life since a young child).  Buried in my notes and research Wolfgang [...]

The weather in the last few weeks has been a meteorological nightmare.  On the bus this morning a gentlemen stepped on to the bus with an umbrella that…looked more like a tent.  You might be wondering right about now, “Michael, you’re a marketing guy, who works for a company that provides applications to measure the [...]

I have to make the assumption that the only living object on the planet that is happy to see this sight, would have to be trees. I think there are many reasons why this came to be.  One is that more and more people (not just Americans) are spending their time looking at lithium battery [...]

To begin our story, a reenactment of a recent Marketing meeting in New York City. Three Executives (COO, CTO & a VP) walk into a conference room and the table is flanked by the Marketing Department. The COO says “OK…you had your fun on Facebook, you got to Tweet whenever and whatever you wanted….now tell [...]

“With great power comes great responsibility.” I find myself caught between two worlds.  My job title is “Senior Marketing Manager” here at Crowd Factory.  The problem is I do not always write like a Marketing Manager.  It would be very easy for me to write 1000 words every day about how Crowd Factory is helping [...]

Register for the March 23rd Crowd Factory Webinar ! How to Build Social Campaigns Into your Website Webinar Description: Social Media marketing is not all about Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. A major contributor to the success of a social media marketing program is how well you leverage your website visitors to engage and share information [...]

Take a look at this great mention of Crowd Factory in the Wall Street Journal Blog alongside our customer TripAlertz. Here’s one out-of-this world discount you won’t find on Groupon. TripAlertz Inc. emerges from stealth mode this week, promoting a flight to space which executives hope will launch the start-up to cosmic growth. Founded last [...]

There was a flurry of activity in the social media analytics world last week. Both Adobe and Hootsuite have announced the launch of tools that will allow users to track activity on the major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We can only hope each is using their own tools for good! The [...]

With great pride and excitement, my first post.  Week 1 here at Crowd Factory has been an incredibly eye opening experience. While well versed in social media, I am learning a great deal about the value of social media by connecting social activity to conversion events.  It’s true, Social ROI made simple. I recently logged [...]

We are very excited at Crowd Factory today to announce that we have closed a new round of funding with Storm Ventures, Hummer Winblad, and Peninsula Ventures.  We’re certainly excited for some of the obvious reasons that one might think about (cash in the bank is always a good thing), but more importantly, we’re excited [...]

I Think in Campaigns It’s hard to imagine how pervasive social networking has become in the everyday consumer’s life in such a relatively short time.  Today, there are more visits to Facebook than Google.  It’s also hard to imagine how difficult it has been for marketers to integrate this new channel and medium into their [...]

Are you fascinated by the social media revolution? Do you see the amazing statistics showing the effectiveness of Social Campaigns? There are a lot of players in Social Media right now, but how about being a part of a team that is creating and running a Social Marketing application that actually measures ROI? Analysts and [...]

Social leads are better Our thesis: “A lead obtained through Social Marketing activities is of lower cost and delivers a higher value than leads obtained through other digital marketing means (i.e. search, display)” We have a handful of solid data points to support this thesis: A study of 33 million unique users from Chitika’s network [...]

I’ve been involved building companies with customer acquisition since early in the internet.  From registration forms, social networks, CPM, CPA and CPC, the web has grown up nicely with rich multi-channel marketing channels.  For every marketer, most equations filter down to what is the ultimate cost of acquisition. There is a new funnel in town. [...]

Team Crowd Factory has been paying attention and discussing the implications and impact of the announcements Facebook made at their F8 Developer Conference; clearly the announcements impact end users, publishers and Social Marketing providers (like us); this post discusses a few points from the point of view of the latter. We are excited: Facebook as [...]

The social revolution has occurred.  People all over the world have given up their TV sets in favor of the Web and social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  400 million Facebook users can’t be wrong.  The only question has been, “How will businesses and brands not only react, but take advantage?”  To date, [...]