Crowd Factory has had an amazing 2011 so far in part to the amazingly creative & fun working people! We have prepare our entry for the Forrester Groundswell Awards, take a look and let us know what you think!

My Forrester Groundswell Awards

How Britney Spears Used a Group Deal to Debut at #1

Britney Spears was the hottest female icon in pop music at the beginning of the millennium, with five consecutive #1 album launches. But time off had some in the music business wondering whether the star could repeat her success with the launch of her new album “Femme Fatale.” Were her fans still there?

Not only were the fans there, but they were ready and eager to spread the word about the new album. Britney’s label Jive Records tapped into the power of this fan base with an innovative group offer that helped land “Femme Fatale” in the #1 spot on the Billboard charts.

The campaign was a play on the popular group deal model: visitors to Britney.com were presented with an opportunity to pre-order the album, along with an offer to get 20% off the entire Britney catalog in return for getting 10 or more of their friends to visit Britney.com.

Jive Records used Crowd Factory’s Social Offer application to create the group deal as well as track all of the social sharing activity.

Jive Records used Crowd Factory’s Social Offer application to create the group deal as well as track all of the social sharing activity.

The Crowd Factory campaign was successful in leveraging Britney’s sizable fan base to drive more traffic to the site and generate pre-orders for her new album.  The offer drove more than 30% of all traffic to Britney.com at launch, and each sharer got an average of six or more friends to visit the site.  And, the album launched at #1.

Sanjay Dholakia, CEO of Crowd Factory, credits the success of the promotion to the fact that it joined two principles — deals and gaming — and limited the reward to superfans who shared, rather than offering a deal for everyone a la Groupon.

Working with Crowd Factory, Jive Records was also able to see person-level sharing data and track this social activity back to conversions.  This means they were not only able to amplify their marketing spend through the social graph of Britney fans, but also to track and measure social reach, resulting visits, and conversion data to understand the campaign’s ROI.

Realted News and Media

• Be sure to check out the news and media related to the Jive Records Case Study.
• As well as a feature article in Mashable.

Cady Groves Turns Superfans into Guerrilla Marketers

The days of relying on radio to drive music sales are over. For top performers and emerging artists alike, social media has become the new radio: if you get your strategy right, you can drive sales almost entirely through your existing fans. .

RCA realized this early on and has launched a number of programs aimed at mobilizing “superfans” to build awareness and buzz for new artists. They also understood that superfans aren’t necessarily motivated by discounts and would rather get something exclusive, or even just establish their reputation as someone in the know.

With this in mind, RCA designed a campaign for recording artist Cady Groves where it offered fans a free song download for registering on the Cady Groves website, and incentivized fans to share Cady’s music with their friends by offering a free merchandise pack to every fan who convinced five people to download the song.

RCA used Crowd Factory’s Social Offer application to create the promotion as well as track all of the social sharing activity.

Not only was the campaign successful in getting many of Cady Groves’ fans to share with their friends, but the campaign also engaged superfans to take sharing to the next level.  Many of these superfans generated their own tweets, direct messages and Facebook posts.  Some individuals managed to personally recruit several hundred new fans to the Cady Groves website and Facebook page.

Working with Crowd Factory, RCA was also able to see person-level sharing data and track this social activity back to purchases and conversions.  This means that RCA could actually identify superfans by looking at who was sharing, how much they shared and how many friends came back as a result.  Understanding who these superfans are will allow RCA to reward them on an ongoing basis and make them part of their marketing mix, giving them preferential or early access to new items and making them ongoing evangelists for Cady Groves’ music.

Realted News and Media

• Read Crowd Factory’s CEO Sanjay Dholakia’s article in Mashable:
  5 Ways to Encourage Customers to Share Your Content.