Blog Archives - Page 22 of 28 - American Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes vs. Contests

I included a summary of the promotional guidelines from the various social media platforms that I had presented in my recent session at the BlogPaws Conference in Nashville in last week’s blog post. So in keeping with some of this presentation content I thought I would share here the question that we get asked quite often….what is the difference between a sweepstakes (giveaway) and a contest and why chose one over the other? So here goes.

Why Run a Sweepstakes?
First of, sweepstakes are a game of chance, a random drawing, and are also referred to quite often as giveaways. Sweepstakes can help create awareness and excitement around your brand, company or organization. They can help to reach your desired objectives by just running on their own or acting as an overlay to your overall marketing program.They are a great way to easily build or grow your database via email or mobile text messaging by collecting user data.

Sweepstakes are highly measurable and can be very effective when integrated with the right incentive. Therefore, an effective sweepstakes will not only offer participants the chance to win great prizes, but can help you reach some of the following objectives:

– Build and expand your database: entries capture user information
– Drive traffic to your website, social media channels or to your physical locations
– Keep your prize budget manageable, you set the prize package up front
– Reinforce the features and benefits of your brand/service/company through themed sweepstakes and prize tie-ins
– Entice consumers with hard-to-get prizes: leveraging existing partnerships and sponsorships and your own products

Here’s an example of a sweepstakes that is running now for Joffrey’s Coffee that we are administering. It’s a simple random draw that will award one lucky grand prize winner a Disney World vacation by just filling out and submitting the online entry form. Joffrey’s is the official coffee of Walt Disney World so this is a great example of how they are utilizing their partnership with Disney to promote their brand.

Why Run a Contest?
Like sweepstakes, contests also generate buzz and awareness and are a great fit for offering a chance to win a great prize. Unlike sweepstakes, contests are defined as a game of skill, not chance. A contest must be judged based on a degree of skill or uniqueness, and this judging criteria must be stated in the official rules. In a contest you are asking people to do some work to enter, therefore you may receive fewer entries for a contest then from just a random-draw sweepstakes, however they will be more likely to be higher quality.

The most common types of contests today include user-generated content such as photo, video, essay, recipe and design contests. Submissions are then judged or evaluated based on the contest theme and judging criteria and in some cases open for public voting. If you run a contest that invites participants to submit a photo or video you increase the chances that they will share their submission on social media.

So if your marketing goals are as follows, here is why contests are the better tactic:

– Reinforce your brand attributes: customers’ photos, videos and essays highlighting your strengths speak volumes
– Elicit user-generated content that can then be used in your future promotions
– Your engaged followers will help spread the word for you, especially through social channels

Pictured above is an example of an ongoing photo contest we’ve been assisting the team at Rail Europe with. They have been running this monthly on their Facebook page as a way to engage with their followers and build a nice database of photos of iconic Europe scenery.

Sweepstakes and contests must both follow the lottery laws which state that any purchase or payment is not allowed in order to enter. If so, then an alternate means of entry without purchase must be included. Contests however can include a purchase if it’s required to create the submission that will be judged. If you’re interested in discussing your needs and what may be the best tactic for your marketing efforts, please feel free to contact me.

Here’s a summary of the various social media promotion guidelines

Last week at the 7th annual BlogPaws Conference in Nashville I presented a session titled Key Legal Developments in Sweepstakes, Contests and Social Media. So I thought I’d share here a recap of the section that covers the broad array of the guidelines for promotions from the various social media platforms.

Facebook
Back on August 7, 2014, Facebook announced on it’s Developer’s Page that it no longer would allow Like Gating. They gave developers and page administers a 3 month window to make any adjustments to their apps which went into effect in November. Here’s what they stated:

“You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.”

So you certainly can still ask fans to like your page, “Don’t forget to Like our page”. You just can’t make it mandatory in order to enter a sweepstakes or contest.

Then about a month after this announcement Facebook then changed their Promotional Guidelines again and stated that you no longer have to use an 3rd-party app and can run Sweepstakes and Contest promotions right on your Page’s Timeline by simply asking fans to Comment on or Like a post as a way to enter. We’ve seen some promotions run this way since the change, but the majority still appear to be using an app. The issue with running a promotion right on your page is that you are not collecting data on the participants and therefore it’s hard to contact the winner(s). So it all depends on what your objectives are in choosing which method to follow.

Twitter
Twitter’s Guidelines are pretty simple and overall they want to avoid “spammy” posts filling up their platform. When running contests or sweepstakes they ask businesses to ensure that participants follow their overall guidelines which include:

– Discourage posting the same Tweet repeatedly. This means do not create a sweepstakes where the most retweets win.
– Discourage the creation of multiple accounts in order to gain extra entries.
– A good practice is to always ask users to include an @ reply to ensure you can view all entries.
– Encourage the use of posts that are relevant to the contest. Don’t use a hashtag that is not related to the topic.

Instagram
Instagram’s Promotional Guidelines are somewhat similar to the other social media platforms which they encourage having a set of official rules that are legally compliant with the applicable rules and regulations for running a sweepstakes or contest. They also want the rules to state that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Instagram (as you should do with any social media platform that you are including as a method of entry.

The only additional guideline is do not inaccurately tag content or encourage users to inaccurately tag content (ex: don’t encourage people to tag themselves in photos if they aren’t in the photo).

Pinterest
Pinterest came out with some updates to their Brand Guidelines to include best practices for sweepstakes and contests. Here are some of the dont’s they suggest :

– Don’t suggest that Pinterest sponsors or endorses you or your promotion.
– Don’t require people to Pin from a selection – let them pin what they like,
– Don’t make people pin or repin your contest rules.
– Don’t run a sweepstakes where each pin, repin, board, like or follow represents an entry.
– Don’t encourage spammy behavior, such as asking participants to comment.
– Don’t ask people to vote with pins, repins, boards, or likes.
– Don’t overdo it: contests can get old fast.
– Don’t require a minimum number of pins. One is plenty.

Google + – Does still not allow promotions on their platform. You are only able to promote it on this platform.

FTC – Federal Trade Commission
Besides the social media platform guidelines, you should also be aware of updates on the FTC endorsement and testimonial policy. They recently published a list of Q&A’s that you may want to take a look at. When it comes to sweepstakes and contests they state that any incentive, no matter how minimal such as an entry into a contest or sweepstakes for making a post on social media sites, may be an endorsement. Thus it requires a disclosure. The use of the promotion title alone is not adequate, and they are encouraging including #Contest or #Sweepstakes or #Entry or similar designation in a hashtag. The recent updated Q&A’s say that using #sweeps is not enough and instead it should be the whole word in this case.

That’s all the latest that I’m aware of. They change on a regular basis, so it’s tough to stay updated, but hopefully this summary will be of help to all. If you have any further updates you are aware of please share them here.

BlogPaws 2015 Conference Recap from Nashville

Just back from Nashville and the 7th BlogPaws Conference which was again another great event. I got to present on Saturday, day 2 of the conference, on Key Legal Developments in Sweepstakes, Contests and Social Media. Even though I was one of the break-out sessions scheduled after lunch, we had a good turn-out with some great questions from the audience (along with a couple of shout-outs from a few dogs!). I will be uploading the presentation to our LinkedIn profile here www.linkedin.com/company/american-sweepstakes-&-promotion-company if interested.

For those that are not familiar, the Blog Paws Conference is catered to pet bloggers to help them grow and learn social media skills. But it is also a great event for anyone interested in building their brand online. It’s the only conference were you’ll find some attendees wearing cat ears along with those that have brought their dogs and cats and this year, ducks, pigs, ferrets and even a rat! So I wanted to share here a few of the highlights and photos of the conference.

One of the speakers I was really looking forward to was Peter Shankman, a PR and social media marketing consultant, speaker, author and founder of Help a Reporter Out, who took the stage as Friday morning’s keynote speaker. He was very engaging and had us all laughing pretty hard. This was the third time I heard him speak and was glad to that he is still saying that one of the key rules today in the world of media and marketing is “Transparency”. I’ve been repeating that rule in many of my own presentations ever since. Peter used the new Periscope app to live tweet part of his presentation on Twitter, so I decided to do it as well. It was one of my first times using this new app. I was able to upload here it to YouTube. So take a look, this excerpt quite funny.

The BlogPaws team is still tallying some of the final numbers they were able to donate to various local shelters, but they stated last night in a Twitter Chat (#BlogPawsChat) that approximately $18k in cash, 27k+ lbs of food and over $5k in product was donated from #BlogPaws 2015! Next year’s conference was announced to be held in Phoenix, June 23-25. You can click on the image to register.

Please enjoy some of the photos I took of a few of this year’s pet attendees! Hope to be back next year!

www.linkedin.com/company/american-sweepstakes-&-promotion-companywww.linkedin.com/com

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Headed down to Nashville to speak at the annual Blog Paws Social Media Conference

I’m headed down to Nashville, TN, on Thursday of this week to attend the world’s most unique social media conference, BlogPaws. Anyone who’s been following my blog knows that I’m a huge fan on this annual conference. This will be my fifth time attending. I’ve only missed one so far which was last year in Lake Las Vegas. I have been asked to speak again at this year’s conference which I am looking forward to.

This three-day, pet-friendly event is taking place May 28-30 at the Sheraton Music City Hotel. My favorite part of the BlogPaws Pet Blogging and Social Media Conference each year is seeing all the pets, some celebrities with their own blogs and shows. In a recent press release by the BlogPaws team they listed what this year’s pet attendance looks like:

Over 100 dogs
11 cats — plus a variety of service cats and adoptables
2 celebrity mini pet pigs
3 ferrets
1 hamster
1 possible capybara
1 diapered duck
2 rats
3 ducklings — Huey, Dewey, Louie!!!

Two of my good friends and fellow blogging colleagues, Yvonne DiVita and her partner, Tom Collins, were co-founders who introduced BlogPaws in 2009 and held the first conference in Columbus, OH, in 2010. In less than six years, BlogPaws has become the go-to resource for pet bloggers and social media enthusiasts looking to build their online presence to enhance their social networks and support animal shelters and rescues around the world. Brands also consider BlogPaws the go-to resource when looking for social media attention and contacts.

Many pet bloggers, as well as the teams that run the online websites for animal shelters and the brands themselves, regularly run sweepstakes, giveaways and contests. So my conference session titled “Key Legal Developments Affecting Sweepstakes, Contests, Disclosure & Digital/Social Media” will address a broad array of legal regulations and guidelines facing us all today. Being able to effectively engage with customers and key audiences is a top objective today. However, there are many risks that need to be considered when doing this.

I’ll first review what is an “Illegal Lottery” and explain what ‘NO PURCHASE NECESSARY’ really means. I’ll define “consideration”, which here refers to the entrant’s time, effort or money. Besides making a purchase or payment it also means requiring a considerable amount of time, like filling out an in-depth survey, making multiple store visits or requiring too many social media tasks. Is sending a text message “Consideration”? Does posting a photo of a food item that you just took a bite of “Consideration”? Is watching a video to find the answers “Consideration”? It’s a very fine line and some have a higher risk then others.

The conference is capped at 500 attendees and this year they recently announced that it has again sold-out. There will be over 40 different sessions offered including advanced SEO Techniques, WordPress Tips, How to Build your Brand, Creating Engaging Content, Getting Noticed by the Media, Utilizing Video, Facebook and Twitter Tips, Making Money Online, Effective Fundraising and many more. Mary Engle from the FTC will be back to review more details on the FTC Guidelines for bloggers. Friday morning’s keynote speaker that I’m really looking forward to seeing again is Peter Shankman whose talk it titled “Ain’t No Loyalist Like A Zombie Loyalist”. I saw Peter Shankman years ago when I was first starting out in the new world of social media and he said something that I still use today as the #1 guideline we all need to follow…Transparency.

I will be posting my presentation online after the conference, so you’ll be able to find it here on and on our Linked In Company Page as well as my Personal Page . Or, just email us and we can send you a copy. I’m also really looking forward to visiting the city of Nashville for the first time. Hopefully I’ll get to enjoy some live music, taste some good southern cooking and experience what makes this city so special. Any tips please pass along.

Meet the Legends Sweepstakes from Sugarlands Distilling Co.’s offers chances to attend a unique weekend event

Here’s a chance to “Meet the Legends”? For the first time we’re working with the Sugarlands Distilling Company, producers of craft quality moonshine and whiskey. Their distillery is located in downtown Gatlinburg, Tenn. and is a popular tourist attraction where guests are invited to taste free samples of authentic Sugarlands Shine, take a tour and purchase a variety of moonshine flavors, merchandise and apparel.

The distillery also offers live music, Appalachian storytelling, and outdoor adventure tours in the Sugarlands, an area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park historically referred to as “moonshiners’ paradise.” Their famous Sugarlands Shine recipes were originally created by three different skilled moonshiners. The “Meet the Legends” Sweepstakes is offering up to 10 winners, each with a guest, to visit Gatlinburg for a fun-filled weekend to meet with Moonshine Legends, Jim Tom Hedrick, Mark Rogers, Tickle and the Sugarlands Distilling Co. gang.

Marvin “Jim Tom” Hedrick is a legendary moonshiner, master storyteller and still maker. Nearly sixty years ago he learned to make moonshine in the Great Smoky Mountains. Over the years, Jim Tom became one of the most skilled moonshiners in Appalachia, and his original hand-crafted spirits were in high demand throughout the South.

Mark Rogers is usually cloaked in camouflage, like a well hidden moonshine. He’s a true American hunter, fisherman and woodsman. Rogers has been moonshining most of his life, learning the trade at the young age of 8 years old from his twelve uncles. “Once you’ve had some good liquor, you’ll know it,” Rogers said. American Peach moonshine is the best you’ll ever taste.

From an early age in Danville, Virginia, Steven Ray Tickle gained a wealth of distilling knowledge from older relatives. He experimented with recipes on his own ten-gallon still using a turkey fryer, jelly jars for double-thump kegs, and a shotgun condenser. Tickle often states, “It gets in your blood. I’ll moonshine ‘til the day I die.” Tickle’s Dynamite Cinnamon Moonshine is potent proof of his legendary, wildfire spirit.

From now until July 31 participants are invited to visit the promotional website at www.moonshinelegends.com and fill out an entry form. If selected, the winner and their guest are invited to attend this special Smoky Mountain Moonshiner Weekend that will take place October 23 – 25. The travel prize package includes 2- night hotel accommodations in a hotel in Gatlinburg along with a $1,000 Prepaid Debit Card to cover travel expenses. Meals and weekend activities including a chance to “Meet the Legends” will all be provided by Sugarlands Distilling Co.

This is a great example of a sweepstakes offering an experiential prize that a person could not obtain on their own. Sugarlands Distilling has put together a unique weekend event that only the winners of the sweepstakes can attend. I’m sure that there are many fans that will be signing up for a chance to win and will be thrilled if they’re selected. I know I would love to visit this beautiful area of the Smoky Mountains, especially in October, and of course taste some of those moonshine flavors!

Several sweepstakes offer free groceries for a year, $25K in home renovations and more

Three supermarket chains are giving away chances to win Free Groceries for a Year! We are working with Bi-Lo Holdings, the parent company of Winn-Dixie, Bi-Lo and Harvey’s Supermarkets, who are sponsoring the Great Grocery Giveaway Sweepstakes which each chain launched today.

Winn-Dixie is giving away 30 $5,000 gift cards, for a total of $150,000. Bi-Lo is giving away 15 $5,000 gift cards for a total of $75,000 and Harvey’s is giving away 5 $5,000 gift cards, for a total of $25,000. That’s a total of $250,000 in free groceries from the parent company.

Participants are invited to visit each chain’s website and register their customer rewards card in an online form to obtain one entry. Once entered, a coupon for $10 off their next $100 purchase is loaded to their card. If participants don’t have a card they can sign up for one as well. The overall objective of the promotion is to obtain email addresses for current shopper card holders as well as obtain new card holders. Those that don’t want to sign up for a card have the obtain to enter by mail providing they supply an email address. These sweepstakes run till June 16.

Another sweepstakes that we’re working on that recently launched is for the Hallmark Channel. The ReNew-It-All Sweepstakes is offering one lucky grand prize winner a chance to receive a $25,000 ultimate home renovation plus a trip for two to Los Angeles and an opportunity for the winner to appear on the Hallmark Channel’s Home and Family Show. The prize package includes $15,000 in cash along with a $5,000 Lumber Liquidators gift card and a $5,000 Mattress Firm Gift Card. The trip package includes round trip airfare for two, hotel accommodations, a rental car, one day passes to Universal Studios in Los Angeles and a $650 spending allowance for food and expenses during the trip, Total value of this grand prize is $30,000.

All participants need to do is enter online. This sweepstakes ran last year as well with similar prize providers. It provides the Hallmark Channel an opportunity to promote their Home and Family Show, hosted by Mark Steines and Christina Ferrare, which in now running on weekdays at 9am ET/10 am CT. This sweepstakes runs till June 12.

This is just a sampling of the many sweepstakes promotions that brands are using this spring season to engage with their customers and fans. Offering prizes like these that fit with your brand and are relevant to your customers is key to a successful promotion. If you’re interested in learning more about how a sweepstakes or contest promotion may fit with your marketing objectives, please feel free to contact us.

Dove celebrates moms with a new study, video and social campaign

We will be celebrating moms this Sunday as we observe another Mother’s Day. A new study by Dove revealed just in time for Mother’s Day states that mothers are more likely to influence their daughter’s beauty habits than celebrities. This is such a relief to hear that real relationships in a woman’s life leave the strongest lasting beauty impressions, more so than from what they learn from most female celebrities who are posting their advice on to their social media sites.

According to the study, three times as many women said their mothers influenced their beauty routines than say celebrities have, and as many as 84% of women trust the women in their lives over celebrities for beauty tips and advice.

In light of this study, Dove recently launched the Dove Beauty Stories: Four Generations campaign and video, which encourages women to honor the women in their lives that have taught them how to live beautifully. In celebration of the Dove Beauty Bar, a product that has been passed down among women for nearly 60 years, the campaign’s goal is to inspire the next generation with the lessons, tips and advice they have learned through the power of storytelling.

Documented in the video is the story of one real family that wrote a letter to Dove thanking the brand for the message they stand for and the products they offer. The Dove Beauty Bar has become their family beauty secret that has been passed down through four generations of women along with lessons of beauty and confidence. Dove captured their story recruiting three generations of moms in a new video which is meant to inspire other women to pass down their personal beauty stories and celebrate the women who have influenced them. View the video here:

Included in the campaign is a social invitation from Dove encouraging women to share their own #BeautyStory and celebrate the real women that have inspired them. Throughout this week, leading up to Mother’s Day, followers and fans of the brand’s social channels will be prompted to celebrate the different women in their life from their aunts to their sisters to their best friends. The socially driven campaign will culminate on Mother’s Day where women will have the opportunity to pay homage to their mothers and the beautiful lessons they taught them.

At the same time Dove is running the “Dove Love at First Swipe” Sweepstakes which invites people to create a custom Dove Love Note, then share it on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Pinterest to receive a Sweepstakes entry. Participants can earn up to 3 entries a day by sharing for a chance to win a trip to Paris with the love of their life. Plus 10 First Prize Winners will receive a $150 gift card and 190 Second Prize Winners will receive $25 flower gift cards. This sweepstakes helps to promote Dove Advanced Care Deodorant in which a $2.00 coupon is offered on the site.

So happy Mother’s Day to all moms, new and old. It’s now been five years this spring since my mom passed away and I so wish I could give her a hug and wish her a happy mother’s day. So please give your mom one for me, if you can.

Infographic: Study of Content Shared by Users in Online Promotions

I use the term Social Sweeps to describe a sweepstakes or contest promotion that integrates with social media platforms. This helps to provide participants flexibility in accessing and interacting with a promotion. By providing these various options for users to participate, you appeal to them more positively which helps to increase the participation rate. I’ve always been a big believer that by utilizing social media platforms you enable participants to share your promotion with their friends which allows them to get the word out for you faster and farther!

I came across a recent study that was conducted to learn more about how and why participants share the online promotions that they’ve entered on the various social platforms. The study was done by Easypromos in which they extracted data from more than 200 promotions that were running on their Premium Application from January-February, 2015, in which over 140,000 people took part.

We now get asked quite often about allowing participants to gain bonus entries for sharing which many promotions now include. For example, after a participant enters they are asked to share on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram and they gain additional entries for each share. However, if the promotion is being run on Facebook then you would be in violation of the Facebook policy if you encourage sharing to gain entries. Instead what most Facebook applications allow is for users to invite friends to enter the promotion and if that friend enters, the original user gets an extra entry.

The team at Easypromos created this infographic that displays the results of their study, so I thought I’d share it here. It does state that participants will share the promotion much more when they are offered an incentive, such as extra entries. Take a look.

The study did show that it was almost 50/50 between desktop vs. mobile and Facebook was the top social platform for sharing. However, on January 20th, Easypromos introduced instant messaging applications as another option for mobile users to share the promotion. In that short time WhatsApp became the second most-chosen platform for sharing promotions from a mobile device: 17.19% of shares were done through this app. So this is definitely a trend to watch. Thanks to Easypromos for compiling and sharing the data.

The LOVE Letters are coming. So is the Share the Love Sweepstakes.

They say that Spring is here, but it appears to be more prevalent in some parts of the country than others. Just watching the news I see people outside in t-shirts and shorts. Haven’t gotten there yet in Western New York. Maybe this weekend!

For those of you that live or are traveling through the state of Virginia you will undoubtedly begin to see the iconic LOVE letters. The State of Virginia’s traveling LOVEwork sculpture ties into their tourism slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers”. We’ve been working with the marketing team at Colonial Williamsburg through our sister company, Alliance Sweepstakes, for about five years now and they are extremely excited to host the LOVE letters for the first time.

Through an agreement with the Virginia Tourism Corporation and working with the Garden Clubs of Virginia, they have timed the arrival of the letters during Historic Garden Week. The letters will reside on Duke of Gloucester Street in Merchants Square, April 17-23. In celebration of the sculpture’s arrival, Colonial Williamsburg Merchants Square will be running the “Share the LOVE” photo sweepstakes during that week. Here’s how it works:

People are invited to take a picture of the LOVE letters
Then they must visit either the Colonial Williamsburg Merchants Square website or Facebook Page and follow the links to the Sweepstakes entry form
Once there they fill out the form, upload a photo, and once it’s submitted and approved, the photo will be shared in the promotion’s photo gallery.
For those that would like to use Instagram, the can first post their photo there using the #LOVEMSQSweeps hashtag. Once on the entry form, they will have the option to upload their photo from Instagram.

Each photo submitted will count as an entry into the Sweepstakes for a chance to win one of three $800 prize packages, including a $500 Merchants Square shopping spree and two statewide passes to the 2016 Garden Club of Virginia Historic Garden Week. Many of the Merchants are planning special events while the letters are in town along with the Williamsburg Farmer’s Market on Saturdays.

As with the Kiss Nail Products Dream Vacation Sweepstakes that I wrote about here a couple of weeks ago, we are also hosting and managing the entry form for this Share the Love Sweepstakes. So again we are using my favorite app for this, Shortstack. The app allows us to install the promotion to a tab on the Colonial Williamsburg Merchants Square Facebook Page as well as host it online so the Sponsor can link to it from their website and emails.

Shortstack just announced their new and improved analytic reports. Now you can easily know in real time where your traffic is coming from, whether it’s from search engines, websites, social media platforms or email. Also how people access your promotion, via Facebook vs. the web, or via a page embedded on your website. Or what device they used, a mobile phone, tablet or desktop, and what type of platform they came from.

So if you’re in the Williamsburg, VA, area starting next week be sure to check out the letters and take a photo. This is the first time that Colonial Williamsburg is including Instagram as an option, so we’re really interested to see how many participants use this platform and share their photos there. The letters, together with it being Virginia’s Historic Garden Week , should make for some great photos! Can’t wait to see them. Welcome Spring!

New updates to Facebook’s Messenger App unveiled at last week’s F8 Conference

Facebook hosted their annual conference for developers last week known as F8. This is where Facebook previews their newest and latest products and tools for developers. I always thought it would be really interesting to attend even though I’m not a developer. But this 2-day event takes place on the west coast, this year in San Fransisco, so it’s hard for me to justify the trip. This year I received an invitation to register to attend the conference via their live streaming site, so I did. The site not only let you view the sessions in real time, but also view the videos of the major sessions anytime .

To kick off the conference Facebook first unveiled big plans for Messenger, the separate app that they spun off from the basic Facebook platform that allows you to message anyone on the platform. Facebook is now opening Messenger’s API to third-party developers, which means this extra app that you had to download on your phone is going to become a social network in itself. Facebook is starting off with 40 apps such as those that allow people to send GIFs from Giphy, order a cab, or even transfer payments to friends. Launch partners include ESPN, JibJab, The Weather Channel, Selfied, Stickered, Sound Clips and Meme Generator.

You will have to downloaded separately all these apps that work with Messenger which means I probably should have upgraded my iPhone last time to a larger storage capacity. So instead of Messenger just being another chat platform that you’re reluctant to use, instead it may soon be an extremely useful tool that you’ll use without thinking twice. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told F8 attendees “By opening up Messenger as a platform, we’re going to help people express themselves in new ways”.

Also previewed at the F8 conference was Business for Messenger that I find quite interesting. This tool “enables people to have rich and personal conversations with businesses.” The Businesses on Messenger program facilitates direct conversations between brands, businesses and consumers, and will provide a direct channel for updates and notifications. Initially Facebook is positioning this as a great tool for ecommerce where after a customer makes a purchase on the site they could opt to receive Messenger updates, including order confirmations, shipping status, order tracking or simply to ask questions. Partners include Everlane and Zulily and Zendesk will support the service’s live chat feature.

This opens up a whole new way for businesses to communicate with customers. Right now people can try to call a company and go through rounds of prompts to get to speak with someone live, or message a company on their Facebook page, or send them a tweet and then hope you’ll hear back from someone. Zuckerberg called the current state of customer service abysmal. “It just doesn’t feel like the future,” he said. In its place, “we’re making Messenger a place where [people] can connect with businesses.”

So if Business for Messenger does take off, it could have a huge affect on promotional marketing. Right now most businesses rely on their email database to communicate with customers. Some have been expanding their databases to include opt-in text message lists. However, here is a way to grow a new database where you can reach out to customers on their phone without having to even know their phone number. You can announce new promotions to people, such as sweepstakes and contests, and you can even offer support for these promotions as a way to answer any questions and include photos if needed. It could be a much easier way to notify winners without having to worry that your email might end up in a spam folder or your phone message was ignored and deleted.

I am curious to see what brands start to integrate this tool for promotional marketing in the coming year. I’m going to start to ask them about it. Any thoughts or plans you may have please share. Who knows, Mr. Zuckerberg may be right….the future just might be here.