February 02, 2009 : Appirio Allows Enterprises To Extend Their Sales, Marketing and Recruiting Programs to More Than 150 Million Members on Facebook
SAN MATEO, CA.?February 2, 2009?Today Appirio (www.appirio.com), a leading on-demand products and professional services company, introduced the Appirio Referral Management Solution to help businesses take advantage of existing social networks like Facebook to recruit new employees, raise awareness of new offerings and create closer relationships with customers. The new Appirio solution connects today's fastest-growing social network, Facebook, with over 150 million users, and salesforce.com's industry-leading CRM and Force.com platform to give companies a more systematic way to encourage, manage and measure word-of-mouth referrals.The Solution?Product and Services OverviewThis new solution, which was developed specifically for the needs of mid-to-large size companies, includes a viral user application, a referral enginethat connects Facebook Platform and Salesforce CRM, and three different functional extensions:
Viral marketing: This extension enables companies to promote new offerings, discounts or events to their customers, partners and employees on Facebook. Based on a search of keywords in friend profiles, the application makes recommendations of friends who might be interested in the offer, which users can then choose to take action on. Because of the integration with Salesforce CRM, customers can use the native functionality to track leads, make follow-up offers, and report on campaign success to see how their viral campaigns stack up to other marketing programs.
Viral recruiting: This extension encourages employees to recommend friends in their network who could be a good match for job openings in their company and earn money towards referral bonuses. Employee referrals are a valuable and economical option for companies who mayhave cut recruiting budgets but are still looking to hire the best talent. The viral applicationautomatically searches Facebook for any friends who match key words in open job descriptionsand surfaces that information on a user's Facebook profile. It's up to the user to recommend thejob opening to their friend, who can thenapply through the application. The entire process canbetracked via Salesforce CRM on the back-end.
Viral sales: This extension helps increase the size of a company's "virtual account team" byleveraging relationships that employees might already have to approach strategic accounts orbuild customer relationships. The application maps contacts in Facebook with contacts in thecompany's Salesforce CRM system, and surfaces those connections to employees withinFacebook. The employee can see if a friend has become a lead, bought a product, attended anevent, filed a support ticket, etc. If the employee chooses they can contact their friend throughFacebook to make a connection and ultimately help contribute to their company's bottom line(and maybe even their own bonus!)
The Appirio Referral Management Solution expands on the free, user-focused Facebook application thatAppirio introduced in late 2008?MyFriends@Work. Because the value of a referral depends on a trustedrelationship, the application puts complete control over referrals in the hands of users. For thosecompanies looking to customize these applications to their unique business processes or to get a betterunderstanding of best practices for viral marketing and recruiting, Appirio offers a range of strategy,integration, customization and training services.The Appirio Referral Management solution is now generally available and is already being used orevaluated by almost a dozen companies. For more information on the product and services, please visitAppirio's website at http://www.appirio.com/facebook.
The Customer Need – Quotes"Almost every forward-thinking company today is investigating how they can use social networks to further their business, but many still struggle to generate a tangible benefit. Our customers ask: how do I use word of mouth referrals effectively and responsibly? How do I know if the programs are successful? Appirio can help with all these questionsbecause we deliver an innovative product along with related services that make implementing these viral programs easier and less risky for our customers."
– Narinder Singh, co-founder and CMO of AppirioThomasNet is the leading online industrial marketplace and business-building site connecting buyers and sellers worldwide, and is an early customer of Appirio Referral Management Solution for Viral Recruiting. "ThomasNet is always looking for great talent to help industrial suppliers stand out from the competition and achieve their business goals. We first worked with Appirio to redesign our ThomasNet careers website using Force.com and even though it's only been two months since the site went live we've already seen the number of qualified inquiries we receive each month increase by more than 500%. With Appirio's Referral Management Solution we're now extending our recruiting efforts to include a social networking component that will make it easier than ever for our existing sales representatives to have a role in our recruiting efforts."
– Brian Makas, Manager of Business Intelligence, ThomasNetFitness Anywhere is ahigh growth consumer products company targeting the $200B physical wellnessmarket, and is an early customer of Appirio's Referral Management Solution for Viral Marketing. "Fitness Anywhere has a network of personal trainers certified in the use of our personal fitness equipment. We already use Salesforce CRM to manage our marketing campaigns. Now we can use Appirio's solution to get the word out on Facebook about upcoming events and promotions, and enable our trainers to share these offers with their network of current and potential clients."
– Keith McAfee, Director of Operations, Fitness Anywhere, Inc.Useful Links
Appirio Viral Marketing demo video
Appirio Viral Recruiting demo video
Screenshot of Appirio Referral Managementfor Viral Marketing and Recruiting in action
About Appirio
Appirio (www.appirio.com) provides products and services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of on-demand solutions. Appirio has a proven track record of delivering value to customers by implementing mission-critical Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions based onplatforms such as Salesforce and Google Apps, and developing innovative applications that connect and extend today's leading cloud computing platforms. With offices in the U.S. and Japan, Appiriois the fastest growing partner of salesforce.com and Google, and is backed by Sequoia Capital.Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.