JitterJam® Social CRM

Brings Social Media Marketing, Mobile Marketing, and an Intelligent Contact Database to iContact Users

Durham, NC (Vocus/PRWEB ) May 18, 2010 — iContact, an industry leader in email marketing services for small and mid-sized businesses, and JitterJam, a pioneering social marketing software provider, today announced a partnership to help businesses build trusted relationships with their current and potential customers.

This collaboration combines iContact’s feature-rich email marketing solutions with JitterJam’s unique social media, email, and mobile engagement platform and intelligent contact database. Businesses now have the ability to easily create multi-channel campaigns on a single platform using their existing iContact email lists and templates along with the contacts they’ve cultivated across other social and mobile channels.

“We were looking for an email marketing partner that provides powerful features and capabilities for our customers and a world-class API for deep integration with our platform,” said Ric Pratte, President and CEO of JitterJam. “iContact provides JitterJam customers with all the tools they need to easily create impactful email marketing campaigns along with their social media and mobile outreach, and the integration makes it easy for current iContact customers to expand their marketing outreach to the real-time web seamlessly and without having yet another silo of customer data.”

JitterJam is a comprehensive web-based integrated social marketing platform for multi-channel engagement and marketing. Its rich feature set includes social monitoring and engagement through Twitter, Facebook, email and FriendFeed; email marketing integration with iContact; mobile marketing through a native text messaging campaign tool; multi-channel message and campaign creation, scheduling and measurement; the Make Me Happy™ permission marketing system; and much more. JitterJam’s capabilities enable businesses to develop trusted relationships with their current and potential customers, and to communicate with them through the channels they most prefer.

“We are pleased to partner with JitterJam to provide our customers with the ability to integrate iContact functionality with social media and mobile marketing. JitterJam’s unique capabilities will help businesses develop deeper and more trusted relationships with their contacts,” said Jeff Taylor, Director of Business Development for iContact. “Email continues to be a cornerstone for businesses to drive consumer engagement and adoption, and we’re proud that JitterJam selected iContact for deep integration into their revolutionary platform.”

The iContact integration has been completed and is commercially available for use within the JitterJam platform.

About JitterJam
Founded in 2008, JitterJam empowers consumer-facing businesses to leverage social marketing and have it perform in concert with their other marketing initiatives. JitterJam is a comprehensive platform that integrates social media, e-mail, and mobile engagement with an intelligent contact database and the tools needed to turn social interaction into new opportunities for revenue growth. JitterJam is headquartered in Bedford, NH. For more information on JitterJam and to sign-up for a free trial, visit www.jitterjam.com.

For media inquiries, contact Margaret Donnelly, VP of Marketing & Business Development, Margaret.donnelly(at)jitterjam(dot)com or 603.782.4909.

Connect with us via Twitter @jittergram, via the JitterJam LinkedIn Group and our Facebook Fan Page.

About iContact
With more than 63,000 customers, iContact provides email marketing for SMBs and non-profits. iContact allows for easy creation of email newsletters, surveys, and autoresponders. Market leaders like Intuit, Vonage, Symantec, International Paper, LG Electronics and ReMax, use iContact to build stronger relationships with their customers and prospects at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing methods.

iContact, designed for the Small Business market is available at www.iContact.com; iContactPlus, a suite of custom and managed services designed for mid-sized organizations, is available at www.iContactPlus.com.

For media inquiries, contact Chuck Hester, APR, Communications Director,
Chuck(at)iContact(dot)com or 919.459.1451.

Visit us on Twitter @iContactCorp, iContact Linkedin Group, and our Facebook Fan Page.

Recognized for Outstanding Advancements in Marketing / Customer Relationship Technology

Apr 30, 2010 (PRLog) – Bedford, NH – JitterJam™, a leader in social marketing software, was named a finalist in the 7th Annual MITX Technology Awards. The MITX Technology Awards recognize emergent and innovative technologies developed in the New England area, as well as the individuals and organizations responsible for driving these advancements. The Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) is the country’s premier Internet business and marketing association.

“The MITX Awards showcase the most innovative companies and technologies in New England, and we are honored to be recognized for our achievements,” said Ric Pratte, President and CEO at JitterJam. “The JitterJam platform represents a significant advancement over today’s marketing tools and technologies. Our unique combination of social marketing tools, analytics and an intelligent contact database provide businesses with the ability to manage the complete consumer trust cycle—from initial touch to engagement, from engagement to advocacy. We are proud to be an innovator in consumer marketing and relationship management.”

JitterJam’s web-based social marketing platform enables companies to turn social conversations into trusted customer relationships. JitterJam integrates social media, e-mail, and mobile marketing with an intelligent contact database and the tools that turn social interaction into new opportunities for revenue growth. JitterJam’s groundbreaking combination of social listening and engagement, automated contact database development, multi-channel marketing tools and analytics brings true ROI to social engagement by enabling companies to develop the deep one-to-one customer relationships that consumers expect in today’s marketplace.

“Being named a finalist in the MITX Technology Awards is an important achievement,” said Kiki Mills, president of MITX. “This recognition translates into increased exposure with media, industry analysts and investors, and provides them a higher profile in their industry. We congratulate all of the finalists on their achievement and wish them luck in the competition.”

Finalists represent the spectrum of innovation in New England’s technology sector, demonstrated by eleven categories at this year’s awards, which include: Analytics and Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Devices, E-Commerce/Alternative Retail, Marketing/Customer Relationship Technologies, Mobile Application, Mobile Infrastructure, Online Advertising, Rich Media, Social Media, and Technology Enablers.

JitterJam will be recognized with the other finalists in the category of Marketing/Customer Relationship Technology at an awards ceremony attended by the region’s top technology and business professionals. Winners will be announced at the ceremony at the Boston Marriott Copley Place on Wednesday, June 2, 2010.

In addition to being selected as a finalist for their category, finalists are eligible for a ‘Best of’ award and for a ‘Promise’ award, which recognizes start-up companies whose emerging technology solutions show promise to make a significant business impact.

The MITX Technology Awards program is sponsored through the generous support of: The Atom Group, DLA Piper, LEWIS PR and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Creative partners include: Corey Machanic, Height&Hands, massAV, and PJ Moore: Brand Design & Strategy.

About JitterJam
Founded in 2008 as JitterGram Inc., JitterJam empowers consumer-facing companies in the mid- to small-business market by putting the sophistication and power of multi-channel integrated marketing within their reach. JitterJam, the company’s revolutionary product, is a comprehensive tool that integrates social media, e-mail, and mobile engagement with an intelligent contact database and the tools needed to turn social interaction into new opportunities for revenue growth. For more information or to instantly sign up for JitterJam’s services, go to http://www.jitterjam.com.

About MITX
The Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) is the region’s premier professional organization for the Internet business and marketing industry. Reaching more than 7,500 professionals in New England, MITX is the community for thought leadership, building business relationships and professional training and development. Members of the MITX community take advantage of events, sponsorships, speaking opportunities and networking to make business connections and exchange ideas. With more than 60 events annually, MITX provides its members with the opportunity to promote their companies to targeted audiences and provides a valuable forum for networking with other likeminded peers to source potential business leads, partnerships, ideas, and funding. MITX is headquartered in Cambridge, MA. Visit us at http://www.mitx.org.

JitterJam, JitterGram and Turning Conversations Into Customers are registered trademarks or trademarks of JitterJam.

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the advantages and disadvantages of Facebook and Twitter. Today, I’d like to wrap up my argument in favor of different content for different channels with some thoughts on email and mobile marketing.

Email: If Twitter is an enormous open-invite party, email is the one-on-one pitch you get to give someone in a quiet room next door. So, while there are no technical limits on how long your message can be, it’s important to keep in mind that you are interrupting your contact every time you send them an email. Your email messages should be relevant (and/or entertaining), should include at least one actionable item, and should allow the reader to get back to the party (or the office) in short order.

Also, keep in mind that, while email can be a useful tool for hammering home a point you’ve made elsewhere, email shouldn’t be a simple exercise in repetition. If all the customer hears are the same bullet points they’ve heard elsewhere, it doesn’t take much effort for them to unsubscribe from your mailing list. Make it worthwhile for them. They’ve taken time out of their day to give you their attention: give them something substantial and new in return.

Key Takeaways: Email can and should be used as part of a fully integrated multi-channel marketing effort, but it shouldn’t simply be a compilation of your best content from other sources. You need to include fresh, valuable material with every message, or else the effort is wasted, and the customer might just be lost.

Mobile: Text messaging has become one of the most active conversation streams in the digital age. Like email, it’s a one-to-one pitch. But it’s a one-to-one pitch that happens just as the elevator is reaching your customer’s floor: you’ve got thirty seconds, and then they’re gone.

When you market by text message, your call to action has to be relevant and timely. Text messaging is all about immediacy. Our phones buzz and blurt out alert sounds, and we pick up right away, because we never know if an emergency meeting has been called, or if the kids have locked themselves out of the house. So, your message better be worth that kind of instantaneous attention.

Key Takeaways: Marketing via text message must be relevant, brief, and actionable. Mobile marketing is more disruptive than marketing through any other channel, and must be handled with extreme care. It’s not about conversations—at least not for marketers—it’s about alerts.  Craft your content accordingly.

Do you differentiate your content across channels? Or, do you see benefits in keeping the message the same across all platforms? Let us know.

With services like Ping.fm, it’s easy enough to blast all of your digital marketing channels with the same message. But is that the best idea? Each channel has its own advantages and disadvantages when it comes to the dissemination of content. So, why not tailor your messages accordingly?

Facebook: Facebook has a lot in common with the dry erase boards my classmates hung on their dorm room doors back in college. As long as you had access to the walled community of our campus—and as long as the dry-erase marker hadn’t run out of ink—you could write on the wall of anyone you chose. Conversations were focused and easy to follow. And because these things were so ubiquitous, you could communicate with almost anyone in the community.

If you extend that metaphor to include the notice boards that dotted campus hallways, it was also theoretically possible to communicate with organizations you were a part of (groups) or a fan of (fan pages).

Facebook, like those dorm room doors of old and their bulletin board counterparts, also has the advantage of being able to hold additional content alongside text. So, in addition to near ubiquity, the service offers the opportunity to communicate through a variety of media. The same can’t be said for Twitter and mobile marketing, and can barely be said for email.

The service’s major disadvantage is the wall that surrounds it. On Facebook, you have to be invited to join a conversation, or you have to start one yourself (and recruit others to join in). This may change in the future, but, for now, it’s much harder to serendipitously stumble across a relevant discussion than it is on Twitter.

Key Takeaways: Posting your Twitter feed to your Facebook Fan Page and doing nothing more with it is not taking advantage of all that the platform can do. Try including photos, audio, and video. And take advantage of Facebook’s ability to handle multiple links if it makes sense. Also, remember that your audience is limited to those who have already signed up to receive your updates. So, target accordingly.

Twitter: Twitter is like an enormous open-invite party where you can join a conversation about just about any topic, so long as you listen carefully enough to find it.  And, because conversations on Twitter can be shared and discovered much easier than they can be on Facebook, there is a potential for wide, fast dissemination of content.  Quantity of followers on Twitter counts for far less than quality. A select group of influencers can help spread your message much further than you could by yourself within the walled garden of your Facebook Fan Page or group.

Of course, the upside of Twitter is also its downside. Because everyone in the room is talking, all at once, it’s much harder for one voice to be heard. Your efforts on Twitter need to begin with a small conversation over in the most relevant and receptive corner of that overcrowded party hall. You should never begin by pulling out your megaphone and trying to get everyone’s attention all at once. On Twitter, anyone can turn your personal volume knob down to zero. And once one person’s done it, it’s likely that more will follow. Remember that.

Key Takeaways: Content posted to Twitter should be short, relevant (and/or entertaining), and easy to pass on. Yes, you technically have 140 characters to play with. But, if you use all 140 characters, you’re making it that much harder for your followers to pass your message on via retweet. And the viral nature of Twitter is one of its key strengths.

And, while you should certainly take advantage of Twitter’s ability to include links, you should make sure those links aren’t always sales pitches. Don’t be that guy (or gal). Be helpful, be educational, and, most of all, be cordial—eventually, someone will ask you what you do, and then you’ll have your chance to pounce.

In 140 characters or less, of course.

Tomorrow: Part 2: Email and Mobile