As companies of all sizes look to grow and monetize their social communities, a company called Fan Appz has launched an upgrade of its social media audience engagement software. Called Fan Appz Pro, the new solution will enable companies to start at a basic $50 per month fee to attract and retain fan members on Facebook through polls, promotions, and contests. By paying into the Fan Appz Pro solution, the company says fan subscription services are within reach for all kinds of brands.

“The Fan Appz Pro solution will have a lot of monetization opportunities for brands such as ad space and subscriptions,” says CEO Jon Siegal. “But most importantly it will give customers the desire to come back and participate. Therefore traffic grows and engagement gets stronger.”

If it sounds like a CRM-based approach, then Siegal feels like he’s hitting the right notes. He cut his teeth at Siebel’s CRM division before founding Fan Appz and knows that customer engagement will be the long-term solution to any community. After launching late last summer with a basic and then enterprise version of the software, Pro will be another step toward what he says will be a ubiquitous social platform.

“I’ve learned that you have to be where the customer wants you be,” he says. “And I’ve learned that as far as the brands behind the relationship are concerned, they don’t want to be concerned with infrastructure. We do that very well.”

So far the Fan Appz client base has ranged from entertainment personalities (George Lopez, David Spade, and Jeff Dunham) to big entertainment brands such as NBA, NBC Universal, Hulu, Relativity Media and digital marketing company, Molotov. While the vasic price is sure to attract a wide base of companies, Fan Appz also delivers a customizable toolset of social media marketing applications for higher fees.  Example: The NBA frequently runs polls on MVP candidates, and through it, better understands their fan base so it can continually learn and improve its marketing.

However, Siegal would not have set a $50 price for the service if he didn’t think there were individual as well as small business opportunities. In fact one of Fan Appz’ talent agency partners has advised its clients to get on Facebook before they are behind the social media curve. Siegal says the same philosophy applies to any business.

“If you don’t step up to the soap box someone else will,” he says. “Local businesses need to have social media apps to find out who their best customers are. With just a few clicks, anyone can quickly install Fan Appz's integrated suite of marketing applications and begin creating custom Top 5 polls, quizzes, gifts, coupons and promotions that engage users.  More importantly, Fan Appz applications provide a built-in mechanism for viral marketing: Each time a fan takes a quiz or participates in a poll, they can publish their responses to their Facebook stream, exposing a whole new set of people to the company, brand or person in a fun and engaging way.”

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