Category Archives: Company

Safeguarding Your Sweepstakes and Contests

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Safeguarding Your Sweepstakes: How the Votigo Engineering Team Combats Bots, Fraud, and Bad Actors

In the dynamic landscape of online promotions, ensuring the integrity and fairness of sweepstakes is paramount. At Votigo, we understand the critical importance of protecting our clients’ promotions from malicious activities. That’s why our dedicated software engineering team is taking proactive measures to ensure that bots, fraud, and bad actors are kept at bay. Here’s a closer look at how we’re fortifying our defenses:

Implementing Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and One-Time Passwords (OTP)

Two of the most effective tools in our arsenal are Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and One-Time Passwords (OTP). By adding an additional layer of security, these methods significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access and fraudulent activities. They ensure that only genuine participants can enter and engage with your sweepstakes.

Reach out to Learn More about Votigo

Utilizing Amazon Web Application Firewall (WAF) Features

Our team leverages the powerful features of Amazon Web Application Firewall (WAF) to bolster security:

– Flagging VPNs, Proxies, and Hosting Provider IPs: We actively flag IP addresses associated with VPNs, proxies, and hosting providers, ensuring they are scrutinized more closely.

– Rate Limiting: We have implemented a rate limit of 200 requests per IP every five minutes. This helps to prevent automated systems from bombarding our servers.

– Geo-Restriction: Upon request, we can restrict access based on geographical locations, further refining the scope of allowed participants.

– Captcha Implementation: For IPs identified as potential threats, we deploy Amazon’s human captcha to filter out automated submissions.

Advanced IP Monitoring and Custom Scripts

Our security measures extend beyond standard protocols:

– IP Subnet Abuse Detection: We utilize custom scripts to monitor specific IP subnets, identifying patterns of abuse. For instance, we recently detected multiple ranges being used by a suspicious entity known as Server Destroyers LLC.

– Manual Checks and Script-Based Analysis: Our team continuously develops and refines scripts based on our learnings. This includes identifying unusual patterns in First Name-Last Name-Date of Birth (FN-LN-DOB) combinations, detecting variations of similar addresses (e.g., Ave, Avenue, St, Street), and flagging rapid submissions from a single IP within a short time frame.

ReCaptcha: An Additional Layer

While traditional ReCaptcha might be less effective against sophisticated threats, it still serves as a valuable additional layer of security, deterring less advanced automated attacks.

Commitment to Ongoing Security Enhancements

At Votigo, our commitment to safeguarding your sweepstakes is unwavering. We continuously monitor, analyze, and adapt our strategies to stay ahead of emerging threats. Our engineering team works tirelessly to ensure that your promotions remain fair, secure, and enjoyable for all genuine participants.

By implementing these robust security measures, we aim to provide our clients with peace of mind, knowing that their sweepstakes are protected against bots, fraud, and bad actors. As the digital landscape evolves, so do our defenses, ensuring that your promotions remain a safe and rewarding experience for your audience.

For more information on how we can help secure your sweepstakes, feel free to reach out to us. Let’s work together to create a secure and engaging promotional experience!

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Votigo Blog: Your Hub for Promotions and Engagement

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Your Hub for Promotions and Engagement

Welcome to the Votigo blog! We’re excited to re-introduce ourselves and share our passion for helping brands run successful contests and sweepstakes that engage audiences and drive results.

Who We Are

At Votigo, we specialize in managing contests and sweepstakes that captivate audiences and achieve your brand’s goals. With over a decade of experience, we’ve partnered with brands of all sizes to create promotions that not only engage participants but also generate measurable outcomes.

What We Do

1. Contests and Sweepstakes Management: We’re experts in designing and executing a wide range of promotions, each tailored to your specific needs:
– Viral Random-Draw Sweepstakes: Increase your audience and drive engagement with exciting sweepstakes that offer compelling prizes.
– UGC Contests: Foster creativity and community by encouraging your audience to submit their own content, whether it’s photos, videos, or stories, showcasing their love for your brand.
– Photo and Video Contests: Leverage the power of visual content with contests that inspire participants to share their best work, all while promoting your brand.
– Instant-Win Giveaways: Create immediate excitement with giveaways that offer instant rewards, driving quick and enthusiastic participation.
– Loyalty & Rewards Programs: Strengthen relationships with your most dedicated customers through programs that reward loyalty and encourage repeat engagement.
– Custom Promotions: Every brand is unique, and so are our solutions. We design custom promotions that align with your goals, whether you’re launching a new product, celebrating a milestone, or simply looking to boost brand awareness.

2. End-to-End Management:

From setting clear rules to collecting entries and selecting winners, our team handles every detail of your promotion. We ensure compliance with all relevant regulations and provide detailed reporting, so you have a clear picture of your promotion’s success.

Why Votigo?

In today’s digital landscape, running a successful contest or sweepstakes requires more than just a great idea; it requires precise execution and expertise. That’s where Votigo comes in. We combine creativity with a deep understanding of promotional mechanics to deliver results that matter.

One of our recent successes involved a TikTok giveaway for a popular breakfast product, where we collaborated with influencers to drive significant brand awareness and follower growth. This is just one example of how we help brands create impactful promotions.

What to Expect from Our Blog

This blog will be your go-to resource for the latest in promotional trends, best practices, and case studies from our own campaigns. We’ll share insights on how to effectively run contests and sweepstakes and maximize the impact of your promotional efforts.

Whether you’re an experienced marketer or just getting started, our blog is here to provide you with actionable tips and inspiration to elevate your brand’s promotional strategy.

Let’s Stay Connected

We invite you to explore our blog and join the conversation. Subscribe for regular updates, follow us on social media, and feel free to reach out with any questions or topics you’d like us to cover. We’re here to help you navigate the world of contests and sweepstakes and make your next promotion a success.

Thank you for visiting, and welcome to the Votigo community!

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Votigo Growth and Product Enhancements

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Press Release:  September 9th, 2014

Votigo Sees Exponential Growth with its SaaS Subscription Business and Continues its Product Expansion in first half of 2014

Company nearly triples its Subscription Customer Base and continues to enhance its social marketing and promotions platform with new features. 

Votigo, the complete social media marketing and promotions company, announced today that it grew its Software-as-a-Service subscription customer base by over 280% in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013.  That number is up significantly compared to the over 100% year-over-year growth from 2012 to 2013 the company reported earlier in the year.  Several strategic partnerships, changes in the Social Media Marketing vendor landscape, and an increase in demand from Middle-market companies have helped with the growth in subscriber base.  In addition to the SaaS subscription growth the company has continued to serve new and existing clients with full-service and custom promotions and social apps.

At the same time its ever-expanding Social Media Marketing & Promotions Platform continues to be enhanced with new features including Social Campaign Calendar, Social Content Hub, Multi-format UGC Contest templates and increased Mobile capabilities.

“The growth of our subscription customer base and the mass adoption of our always-on self-service promotions platform is very exciting for us!  When we first launched in 2007 we knew marketers needed this kind of easy-to-use tool to create promotions to grow their brand and customer databases.” says co-CEO and Founder, Jim Risner, “Now that marketers fully buy into social, mobile, and web promotions we are seeing the increase in demand of our products and services.”

Q1 and Q2 2014 Highlights:

  • Over 280% growth in SaaS subscription customer base
  • Successful traction with several strategic reseller partnerships
  • Launched new Multi-format UGC Contest template
  • Launched new Social Marketing Calendar
  • Launched new Social Content Aggregator / Galleries

Helping our Customers Achieve their Goals:

  • 45,000 new Facebook Likes per day during a Votigo campaign
  • 10,000 contest / sweepstakes registrations per day
  • 1,000 photos and videos submitted per day
  • 1,000 votes cast per day

Numbers based on aggregate averages across all Votigo campaigns from January 1 through June 30, 2014.

With Votigo’s Social Media Marketing & Promotions Platform, businesses have an unmatched tool for acquiring and engaging customers across social channels, the Web, and Tablet / Mobile devices.  Brands can run promotions, user-generated content contests, sweepstakes, and other marketing engagement apps that activate customers; measure the impact and ROI of a brand’s social marketing efforts; and use Conversation Manager and Social Contacts for handling communications and Social Customer Relationship Management (Social CRM) across multiple users, social networks and geographies.  Votigo also continues to provide custom promotions that integrate with any mobile, web, and social channel, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+, and new platforms as they emerge.

About Votigo 

Votigo is a leading social media marketing and promotions company with a Software-as-a-Service platform that supports premium, full-service solutions and easy-to-use self-service tools for brands and their agencies including Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, MasterCard, Live Nation, Sharpie, DreamWorks, Breitling, and GoPro.  Votigo’s technology platform allows brands, agencies and enterprises to acquire, engage, and manage their customers across major Social Networks, the Web, and Mobile.  Votigo’s social marketing suite includes Cross-Channel Promotions, Social Apps, Social Marketing Calendar, Conversation Manager, Contacts, and Analytics. Founded in 2006, Votigo has offices located in Boulder, Colorado; San Francisco Bay Area, and Hyderabad, India.  Votigo made the Inc. 500||5000 list of fastest growing private companies in America in 2013 and 2012.

 

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SOCIAL LUMAscape & Social Marketing Management

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LUMA Partners have refreshed their signature Social LUMAScape, one of the most valuable resources in our hyper-evolving industry. LUMA puts these infographics out for a variety of digital industries. As evidenced by the 1M+ hits on the Social LUMAScape, I am not alone in finding it to be an incredibly valuable resource for staying on top of key segments of social marketing technology providers.

We’re proud at Votigo to move up from Social Promotions to the Social Marketing Management category of the LUMAScape. For us, it’s a different kind of validation: that our technology (and team’s expertise) have evolved beyond the cross-channel, feature-packed, audience-engaging social promotions that we are known for, to a complete suite of tools that help brands like yours do the day-to-day work of finding, engaging, and activating customers from within your social audience.

The latest edition also features more red-dotted boxes- symbolic of this summer’s increased pace of consolidation among our peers in the Social Marketing Management category- Buddy Media, Vitrue, Involver and Wildfire.

As Votigo co-CEO and Founder Mike La Rotonda said recently at MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit, all of the consolidation validates something that your company and ours have known for a long time: Social Marketing is here to stay, entrenched as a key component of the full marketing lifecycle for most businesses. (You can catch video of the entire consolidation-themed panel here.)

It is absolutely an exciting time in the social marketing industry. Don’t expect this LUMAScape to stay current for more than a few months. But study up and choose your technology partners carefully.

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Announcing Votigo’s Social Marketing Suite

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Today is an exciting day for Votigo. We’ve officially announced our full Social Marketing Suite, expanding the scope of our software and services beyond social promotions. This is a milestone day for us: as we celebrate our 6th anniversary as a company, it allows us to meet the needs of our existing customers while targeting new ones with an always-on subscription product for managing their customers and social conversation across all social channels.

We are very proud of what our team has developed in recent weeks and really since we launched Votigo in 2006. Major advances like this are a true team effort and we appreciate everyone’s hard work, from our California office to our Colorado to our Hyderabad office.

Our Software-as-a-Service platform enables marketers to run cross-channel promotions, manage conversations and social contacts and analyze metrics across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Web, and Mobile. Fortune 500 enterprises, mid-market companies, and growing small businesses alike are already using our flexible, proven software to manage social marketing at any scale, for single brands and users to complex international enterprises. Some of Votigo’s current SaaS customers include Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Sony Online Entertainment, Kaiser-Permanente, NCM Fathom Events, Energizer, and GoPro.

Votigo is used to manage brand-consistent promotions across 1,000 unique Facebook Pages for Starwood Hotel & Resorts Worldwide; to allow growing businesses of all sizes to run promotions and marketing apps for as low as $15 per month; and to execute international cross-channel promotions on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Web and Mobile for category-leading brands like Ford, Fox, JBL, Random House and many more. With the launch of our Social Marketing & CRM Suite, we now offer a full set of tools that our customers- the market’s leading social businesses- demand.

At the Enterprise level, Votigo’s platform allows for multiple administrators, user hierarchies and workflow management. Abbey Reider, Global Search & Social Media Strategy, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, said, “With over 1,000 hotel Facebook pages Votigo’s Platform provides a scalable solution that satisfies our corporate and legal team needs, while allowing our individual hotels the autonomy to create unique and engaging promotions.”

“This is a very natural evolution for us,” says Jim Risner, CEO and Co-Founder. “For nearly six years we’ve been fortunate to work with world-class brands and agencies, and fulfill their social promotions needs with innovative campaigns for any channel and in any country. We’ve always been known for our strong technology platform and excellent service. We’ve listened to our clients who were looking for an always-on approach to promotions and the ability to manage the conversation and track and target social contacts. We’re very excited to be expanding our platform to be a single, comprehensive software solution that handles all their social marketing needs.”

Votigo’s Social Marketing & CRM Suite includes:

• Promotions Manager – A full-featured platform for publishing the cross-platform promotions that Votigo has been known for since 2007. Marketers can launch photo and video contests, sweepstakes, and other promotional apps to engage their audiences in multiple languages across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks on mobile and the web. Promotions Manager powers the full promotion cycle, from creating the apps, to sharing and publicizing them to social audiences, to moderating submissions and fan commentary, making it simple and cost-effective to run promotional campaigns throughout the year. Promotions remain one of the most effective marketing tactics for engaging and activating social audiences and Promotions Manager makes it simpler than ever to run promotions of any scope.

• Conversation Manager – A powerful new interface for managing two-way conversations with fans on Facebook, Twitter and beyond. Marketers can use Votigo’s Conversation Manager to simultaneously schedule and publish posts, links, photos and video and promotional campaigns to multiple social channels and accounts, plus manage responses, user-generated content, comments and interactions with fans. By consolidating all social conversations and accounts into a single interface, Conversation Manager saves marketers time and provides actionable insight to effectively measure post engagement.

• Social CRM – A seamlessly-integrated Social CRM system for managing Social Contacts, tracking engagement and influence, and targeting special offers and communications. Votigo’s Social CRM makes it easy to cultivate and maintain a growing audience across social networks – from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn and beyond – within a single platform

• Engagement Apps – A set of rich engagement applications including photo and video galleries, fan exclusives, polls, coupons, and more, each with a clear marketing purpose designed to engage your customers on an ongoing basis.

• Analytics – Votigo analytics let social marketers quickly measure and assess social marketing efforts to understand how their audiences interact with their businesses, focus on what resonates and activates customers, and optimize social marketing resources.

We are still planning continuous updates to the Social Marketing & CRM Suite throughout the remainder of 2012. And we couldn’t be more excited about the expansion of our product offering and the continued growth of Votigo. We’ve had 1,400% revenue growth from 2008-2011 and 15% quarter-over-quarter revenue growth for the past year without having to raise more capital. Most importantly we’ve added 300 new customers in the last twelve months. We’re amazed at what our small team of talented people has been able to accomplish.”

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