Hip Digital Promotions Player

Digital music promotions evolved within the promotions industry, as Hip Digital Media, the leading digital promotions company announced that it has acquired Dallas based Promotional Currency.

About Hip Digital: Hip Digital Media is the leading Digital Promotions Company that brings high-end technology and programs that link brands with their consumers markets. Holding MP3 licenses from all 4 major labels in the US, United Kingdom and Canada, Hip Digital enables innovative customer experiences with digital music campaigns for Fortune 500 brands and online media companies. Experience Hip Digital’s suite of services at www.hipdigitalmedia.com.

About Promotional Currency: Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Promotional Currency is a promotions and promotional risk coverage company that merges digital technology in the form of digital music, ringtones, skins and more with turnkey, fixed-cost solutions for the promotional marketplace. Additionally, Promotional Currency protects companies from over-redemption liability with its in-depth promotional risk coverage and underwriting capabilities, enabling large-scale programs that increase brand awareness and user experience. Visit www.promotionalcurrency.com to learn more.

Digital Music Promotions Reach Gen Y & Boost Marketing Conversions

Digital music promotions reach active consumers, increase marketing conversions of these consumers, and increase sales. Gen Y is online. They are also active retail consumers. This group is a sought after demographic of 10-30 year olds, because they have more discretionary spending than their parents have. They communicate on mobile devices and marketers are finding it very difficult to reach them through traditional media channels. They interact with each other through social media applications and are speaking with each other about your products and services. The sooner marketers learn to join the conversation, the better for the brands they represent.



Smart phones are becoming a way of life. Nearly every coffee shop is providing free wifi to its customers, and many restaurants are following suit. The ubiquity of wireless and smart phones are making digital promotions easier for marketers to launch and providing a strong avenue to reach the coveted Generation Y demographic.

Digital music promotions gain brand loyalty of Generation Y. Investing your promotions budget into a digital music promotion will guarantee you customer loyalty. Traditional promotional incentives do not compare to digital music download promotions. Try earning Gen Y customer loyalty by investing in plastic pens , hats other promotional merchandise. Most customers will not keep their pens, but they download your music giveaway, save it to a mobile device and every time they hear the song you gave them, they will remember your brand. To follow are ideas to deploy these promotions and increase marketing conversion rates.

Social media is an active channel to distribute these promotions. Increase conversion rates by promoting the music giveaway on Facebook, Twitter, email, and a blog with links back to the promotional incentive. The viral marketing aspect of social media will increase campaign activity.

Create a promotional incentive with purchase promotion, by giving away a free music download card, free ring tones, or free wallpapers, when customers spend a set amount of money. Put the entire music promotion on a mobile supported website, and let customers download it via their smart phones.

Or create a free music promotion that rewards customers for referring their friends. With every referral you receive, the customer receives a free music download. Follow up with additional customer rewards programs.

Digital music promotions increase activity on viral marketing and grass roots marketing efforts. Use your music promotion campaign to ask customers and fans to post "like" a Facebook page, tweet a code via Twitter, or complete a marketing survey. Give them a free music download whenever they perform the requisite number of social media tasks..

Promotional incentives including digital promotions provide increased retail store traffic. Give away a music download is customers enter your store at a specific time. This is especially a great way to promote a bar or club that has a specific band or DJ coming to town. For example, you could give away one or two of their songs if people check in on the night they're playing.

Digital music promotions reach almost every audience. Gen Y is actively responding to music promotions, but other consumers do as well. The love of music spans all generations. If you are looking to reach your customer, boost marketing conversions, and increase sales, deploy digital promotions. Releasing these promotions through online applications, social media, and text campaigns will provide increased brand exposure, and boost marketing conversions. The outcome of reaching this active, loyal consumer will be a pleasant surprise and you may even learn something from them about your brand.

Digital Music Promotions Appreciated by 5 Consumer Audiences

Digital music promotions are becoming more and more popular for marketers. Whether you have a small business or work for a large corporation, digital music promotions are an effective, low-cost way to tap into different target markets. Thanks to iPods and mp3 players, fast broadband and smart phones, everyone is listening to digital music. CD sales are dropping, and not just because of the economy. Thanks to major players like Apple's iTunes Store and Amazon.com's MP3 store, digital music promotions are becoming easier to deploy.

Of course, successful digital music promotions are more than just sending someone a $5 iTunes card for making a purchase. The smart marketers are tying their digital music promotions into a marketing campaign centered around a particular idea or event. One hotel chain recently gave free Classic Rock songs to their frequent travelers from a specially-designed website as part of their digital music promotions. Stay more nights, get more songs.

So here are five target markets you can gear your digital music promotions campaign to.

• Generation Y: I realize this is a rather large group. The largest of any group, in fact. At last count, Generation Y outnumbered Baby Boomers 82 million to 78 million. And it's Gen Y that's driving the digital music promotions. They're the biggest users of smart phones, SMS technology, social networks, and of course, digital music. Any time you want to reach this age group with a marketing campaign, digital music promotions will be a safe bet.



• Runners and fitness enthusiasts: Nike hit on a particularly smart idea a few years ago, teaming up with Apple, and creating the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit. It's a chip that will not only give runners their time, distance, pace, and calories burned, it will even pull up the music that matches your pace and inspires you to keep moving. It’s great for cyclists too. If you have an fitness-related business, a digital music promotions campaign that offers motivating and up-tempo music can really get your campaign off the starting blocks.



• Road Warriors: I've spent countless hours on planes and in cars, and I can only listen to podcasts for so long. But I would love to be rewarded for doing what I'm already doing, and listen to some of my favorite music. While we're not out there for the rewards, they still make a nice incentive. In fact, some Road Warriors will make a game out of it, and try to find the most profitable rewards for the fewest miles traveled. So if you can create a digital music promotions that's based on miles traveled, nights stayed, or dollars spent, you'll win the Road Warriors over.



• Stay At Home Parents: Tie your digital music promotions campaign into a product or service that a SAHM or SAHD is going to take advantage of. Parents are just like Road Warriors: they're already doing their thing, regardless of the incentives. But if they can get a little something extra for buying a product from you, instead of your competitors, they're more likely to take advantage of it.



• Entrepreneurs: Whether it is due to the economy, or the fact that more people have a burning desire to start their own business, we're seeing more entrepreneurs and in the business world these days. They are working in coffee shops, meeting at restaurants, and trying to keep costs as low as possible. When you start looking at their buying patterns, you see coffee shops being a big part of an entrepreneur's budget. The smart coffee shop owner is going to attract the entrepreneur crowd with a digital music promotions campaign. Instead of giving away a free cup of coffee, try giving away free downloads of the music you're playing in the store. And if you have musicians play on the weekends, be sure to include any of their music in your campaign.

- Julie Ann Ross

Hip Digital Promotions Incentives

Design your digital promotions with the newest digital media content, including digital music, digital download promotions and ringtones of your customers' favorite artists. Hip Digital Media, the leading digital promotions firm, joined forces with Promotional Currency, specializing in promotions including promotional risk coverage to prevent over redemption on promotions. These two digital music powerhouses joined forces to merge digital content, with entertainment licensing, and proprietary risk coverage models, to deliver turnkey, fixed cost solutions for the promotional marketplace.

Digital Promotions Are Gaining Customer Loyalty

Digital promotions can go a long way in earning customer loyalty, which is very important to your business. That's because return business is going to be much more profitable than your new business.

It can cost five times as much to find a new customer than it does to keep an old one. It also takes a lot less effort to keep old customers than it does to find new ones. Plus, if you can convert returning customers to raving fans, you'll have people telling their friends about your business. You just don't get that word of mouth marketing by trying to gain new customers; it comes from the customers who are loyal to you and your brand.

But while most companies will use discounts and special offers to maintain customer loyalty, digital promotions make it possible for you to increase sales and keep your pricing at its current level, which can boost your profits even more.

That's because when you offer a discount, the savings comes off your profit margin. A 10% discount could be as much as a 20% or even 30% cut into your profits. But digital promotions will be much cheaper, cut into your profits less, and encourage customer loyalty in a way that a coupon just can't.

So, not only have you reduced the value of your product, you've just told your customer, "it's really not worth as much, and in fact, we overcharged you by 10% earlier." You also haven't done anything to earn their loyalty. You haven't done anything to make them love you, tell your friends about you, or come back again and again.

Why Digital Promotions Will Outperform Coupons

Digital promotions are a lot like a frequent buyers program ("Buy 9 items, and your 10th is free"). These programs are wildly successful, and customer loyalty marketers love them. That's because they compel the customer to return several times, until they make enough purchases to get their free item. (Coupons don't do that.)

Your digital promotions can be more along the lines of "buy 10 items, and get 5 free ringtone downloads," "refer 5 friends, get a free wallpaper," or even "upgrade to our premium membership, and get a free skin for your iPhone or Droid." You can tie your digital promotions into any fulfillment condition you want: purchases, references, upgrades, you name it.

The great thing about digital promotions is that 1) they only cost you the number of songs, which can be less than $1 per download, or the cost of the skins, which can be less than $7, depending on the provider.

You Can Measure the ROI of Your Digital Promotions

Another great thing about a digital promotions campaign is that you can easily measure the ROI of the program. Whenever someone completes their condition — buy the 9 items, refer the 5 friends, etc. — you can determine who did it, when they downloaded their digital content, and how many more times they met the conditions to get more content.

You can also examine all this data to determine who your best customers are, who your most profitable customers are, who brings in the most new customers (and how much they spent), and even your most popular digital promotions content.

You can also test your digital promotion campaigns. Do some A/B testing of two different campaigns, and compare their success rate. You can test the different times of year, or the different levels of difficulty of fulfillment, or even compare it to two different types of giveaways, and use that data to see what kind of digital content your customers would like to "win" in the future.

Digital promotions campaigns are an excellent way to gain customer loyalty, while preserving your profit margin. You can tie the digital promotions directly into sales, it has a higher perceived value, you can measure your ROI, and even use it for market testing. It's the perfect marketing solution.

-Julie Ann Ross

A Mobile Promotion Without Promotional Risk

A Mobile promotion is an excellent way to reach today's Generation Y customers through modern technology. A recent report — that any mobile promotion professional should read — showed that global data traffic exceeded an exabyte of data in 2009. That's 1 billion GB.

All told, there are 4.6 billion mobile phone users around the world, with a penetration rate of 68 percent. This is why mobile promotion strategies are so important in today's marketing world. In fact, mobile promotions may be one of the best marketing tools to come along in decades.

A mobile promotion doesn't require the traditional process and costs we've become accustomed to paying. No shipping, no packaging, no worrying about what to do with thousands of leftover tchotchkes.

That's because a mobile promotion is digital. Now, instead of giving out swag, you can give customers music downloads, movie promotions, special ringtones, and mobile games. Now, rather than sending out direct mail to people who might not be ideal customers, you can send out SMS messages to existing customers and people who sign up for your text club — people who want to hear from you. Everything is happening virtually, which means you don't have to worry about storage space

Of course, before you go planning your next campaign, make sure you include promotional risk coverage in your budget.

Promotional risk coverage is basically promotional insurance that makes sure you don't overextend your marketing budget or get yourself into a lot of trouble.

Let's say you wanted to run a contest where someone could win $100,000. The odds of someone winning are pretty remote, but what would you do if someone did win, and you didn't have $100,000? That's where promotional risk coverage saves your bacon.

Promotional risk coverage is also helpful to mobile promotion campaigns. It protects your campaign from over redemption on special gifts and downloads.

Let's say you've arranged with a music label to offer 5,000 downloads of their artists' songs as part of your mobile promotion campaign. But the stars align for you, the promotion takes off, and you end up with 15,000 downloads.

In the first week. And you've got four more weeks to go.

Most people would shut down their campaign right there, desperately hoping to cut their losses. That's where promotional risk can save you. Since it insures against instances like this, you're covered. The music label will still get paid, you can allow the mobile promotion to go on, and you gain more customers than you ever imagined.

We saw this happen in 2009, when Indianapolis-based Marsh Supermarkets ran a coupon promotion on Facebook, where they gave a $10 coupon for any purchase of more than $10... including $10.01.

They had 2,200 fans on Facebook, so the promotion should have cost $22,000. But 45,000 people redeemed the coupon. Marsh canceled the promotion, which angered a lot of their customers, and they took a big hit in the media.

But the biggest hit was the $450,000 in over redemption of the coupons — $428,000 more than they had expected. While they did generate a lot of resentment on the part of their customers, that was minor compared to what they could have lost if they hadn't shut off the promotion.

While it wasn't strictly a mobile promotion, it was a great example of why someone needs promotional risk coverage. Imagine if the same thing happened to your mobile promotion campaign. What would you do if customers were passing the free download codes to their friends? Would you cancel the campaign? Would you risk the backlash from your loyal customers who didn't get a chance to redeem their songs, just because a few people ruined it for the rest of them?

So is it a matter of people being irresponsible and greedy? Or did a mobile promotion succeed beyond our wildest expectations, and we didn't plan accordingly? While we like to think it's the latter, it's still hard to plan accordingly. No matter how wild our expectations are, we can't always see every possibility. That's where promotional risk coverage would have saved our mobile promotion campaign. And our bacon.

Mobile Promotions Including Music Downloads, Ringtones, Movies, and Games

Design your mobile promotion with the newest downloadable releases of music downloads, ringtones, and mobile games. Your promotion budget can be fixed with mobile promotions including promotional risk coverage.

It is worth the risk, but you don't have to take it. Promotional risk coverage protects your promotion budget from over redemption and assists you in fixing your advertising and marketing budget.

Promotional Currency is THE leading digital promotions firm, merging digital technology, artist licensing and promotional risk coverage to deliver turnkey, fixed-cost solutions for the promotional marketplace. Ask us why you can afford large prize offerings including mobile promotions on a budget. Fix your promotion budget with Promotional Currency, THE Digital Promotions Authority. http://www.promotionalcurrency.com