We Sincerely Apologize for the Unintentional Emails Today!

We are extremely embarrassed and sorry to report that we accidentally sent our newsletter today to a number of recipients that had not signed up to receive our newsletter. One of our Campaign Monitor lists that was compiled for a different purpose was inadvertently included in our newsletter mailing. We cannot apologize enough to those who received our newsletter in error, to Campaign Monitor (who is a trusted partner and who is 100% anti-spam) and to our customer base in general. We've always been so careful to only ever email businesses that have explicitly signed up to receive correspondence from us and until now we have been very proud to have had an extremely low unsubscribe rate on our newsletter. This mistake is a huge black mark on our record and we are very, very sorry for this.

If your concerns have not been addressed by this blog post or you would like more information about this situation, please don't hesitate to email or call our founder & CEO personally at victoria@wildfireapp.com or 650 387 4249.

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Navigating the new Facebook Promotions Guidelines

As you may have heard, Facebook recently changed their Promotions Guidelines. We've received a lot of questions about this new guidelines so we wanted to highlight what we consider to be the most important aspects. The good news is that the new Facebook Promotions Guidelines do not stop any company, big or small, from using promotions (i.e. contests and sweepstakes) to grow their fan base and to make their fan page more engaging. The Wildfire team has been working hard over the past couple of weeks to adapt our platform so that companies can get the optimal results from their promotions in Facebook while still adhering to Facebook's new guidelines. Any business or agency that uses our platform can be sure that their promotion is compliant with the Facebook Promotion Guidelines. Here are some 'highlights' of the new guidelines and the changes we've made:

Publicizing vs. Administering

The big distinction that Facebook makes in their new policy is between 'publicizing' and 'administering' a promotion on Facebook. 'Publicizing' a promotion means that you promote, advertise or reference a promotion in Facebook, but you do not collect entries or draw or notify winners in Facebook. 'Administering' a promotion means you both publicize it, collect entries and draw/notify winners in Facebook.

Publicizing a Promo DOES NOT REQUIRE Facebook Approval

All companies/organizations can 'publicize' promotions in Facebook without needing any special permission. Wildfire provides you with the ultimate solution for doing this - using our application you can easily create a promotion that displays on your Facebook fan page, you can require entrants to become a fan to access your promotion and you can spread the word by enabling entrants to publish newsfeeds. We also enable you to easily collect entries, draw winners and notify entrants, but this all happens outside of Facebook so that you do not need to seek special permission from Facebook. As always, our solution enables you to have a promotion up and running in Facebook within minutes.

Administering a Promo REQUIRES Facebook Approval

For those companies wishing to both 'publicize' AND 'adminster' their promotion in Facebook, it is now necessary to check in with your Facebook sales rep to get approval and to have your rules reviewed. Wildfire can manage this process on your behalf and if you do not have a Facebook sales rep we can help you to get one. Just drop us a line at sales@wildfireapp.com or give us a call at 1-888-274-0929 and we'll help you through this process. Please note that eligibility for a Facebook sales rep does depend on your level of spending on Facebook advertising so not all companies will be eligible to get a rep. We recommend that smaller companies use our solution to publicize their promotion in Facebook and administer it outside of Facebook, thus avoiding the need to get permission from a Facebook sales rep.

Promos Can Only Be Run Through a Facebook App (like Wildfire)

Another important change is that companies can no longer administer a promotion in Facebook without using an application, such as that provided by Wildfire. In the past many companies have run promotions by telling entrants to post a comment on the company's fan page wall, upload a photo to the company's Facebook album or click the 'become a fan' button to enter. Such promotions are no longer allowed and must be run using an application. Wildfire's contests and sweepstakes application which enables entrants to submit photos/videos/text, vote, complete an entry form, invite friends and collect entries provides a compliant way for companies to run a variety of different promotions.

Special Facebook Restrictions

Certain promotions can no longer be publicized or administered in Facebook; these include:

• promotions that are open to under 18 year olds (Wildfire's promotions platform automatically excludes under 18 years olds if you're running your promotion in Facebook)


• promotions that are open to citizens of Belgium, Norway, Sweden or India or countries that are embargoed by the US (Wildfire's promotions platform automatically excludes these nations)


• promotions that promote: gambling, tobacco, dairy, firearms, prescription drugs, or gasoline (Wildfire's promotions platform automatically reminds companies of this restriction)


• promotions that offer any of the following prizes: alcohol, tobacco, dairy, firearms of prescription drugs (Wildfire's promotions platform automatically reminds companies of this restriction)


• sweepstakes that condition entry upon the purchase of a product, completion of a lengthy task or other form of consideration

Special Language Required

Facebook's new guidelines require that you include certain language on your entry form that makes clear to entrants that the promotion is not sponsored or endorsed by Facebook. Wildfire promotions platform automatically includes this language for you.

Facebook Promo Guidelines only apply to Sweepstakes & Contests

Facebook's Promotions policy only applies to sweepstakes and contests. The other formats that we offer (i.e. coupons, quizzes, virtual gifts, giveaways, 'top favorites', trivia and sign-up forms) are not affected by Facebook's Promotions policy and nor, of course, are our solutions for Twitter and websites.

If you have any questions about the Facebook Promotions Guidelines or the changes we have made to our platform so that you can easily comply with the new changes, please dont hesitate to contact us at info@wildfireapp.com or call 1-888-274-0929.

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NOMINATE WILDFIRE: 'The Crunchies' Awards!

Nominations for the 2009 Crunchies Awards are now open and we'd be super grateful if you'd consider nominating Wildfire for the "Best Bootstrapped StartUp" category. The Crunchies are described as the 'Oscars' for the tech world and are hosted annually by TechCrunch, Gigaom and Venture Beat. If you think Wildfire is worthy of being included among the best bootstrapped companies of 2009, please click on the link below to nominate us. Thanks, in advance, for your support!

Nominate us here: http://bit.ly/1KcIFs

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NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH: Sweepstakes for Twitter

We were very excited to recently launch our first marketing product for Twitter! Our Twitter sweepstakes solution provides an easy, powerful way to build your Twitter followers and spread the word via Twitter and the best part is that you can have your sweepstakes up and running within minutes. You can also use our solution to simultaneously run a sweepstakes in Twitter, Facebook and on your website. Thanks to our integration with the Twitter API, consumers will automatically become your Twitter follower when they enter your sweepstakes (though you can enable them to 'opt-out') and they can also automatically tweet their followers to increase their changes of winning. To reward for creativity and influence, entrants will only increase their chances of winning based on how many of their followers engage with the sweepstakes (not simply on whether or not they choose to tweet about the campaign). Many sweepstakes currently being run on Twitter (e.g. 'retweet this message to go into the draw to win...") lack legitimacy because they do not provide a way for entrants to access the Official Rules or provide their contact information (e.g. email address or mailing address) and nor do they provide a way for the company to easily and accurately randomly draw the winners. Our technology provides company with an easy way to run legitimate sweepstakes while also providing the added benefit of building companies' Twitter followers and spreading the word about their brand.

Read more about our product launch on TechCrunch

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