Category: Technology

YouTube Updates Contest Policies AGAIN

In March we published a post about YouTube’s changing contest policies. The changes at that time outlined specific age and platform guidelines. These changes have since been revised again, but no official date that the changes went into effect was published by YouTube. As of 8/7/15 these are the new guidelines: They can also be found here. Basically they have done away with three of the requirement we last

August 7, 2015 6 Comments

Fun with Bonus Sweepstakes Entries!

Many clients want to extend the reach of their sweepstakes by adding in ways to earn bonus entries, either through social sharing or sending emails. This method of providing an extra entry for sharing about the promotion sounds easy enough, but you may want to consider all the pros and cons before implementing an incentive for entry mechanism in your next program. Pros: 1. Viral engagement! Letting

April 21, 2015 No Comments

Responsive Microsite or Mobile App…Which One Is Better For a Promotion?

Tricia Zorn, Digital Project Manager at Marden-Kane, contributed this week’s blog about responsive microsites vs. mobile apps. If you are planning on running a contest, sweepstakes or instant win game, and are wondering whether or not you need a responsive microsite or a mobile app, you are not alone. This is probably one of the most asked questions we get from clients who want to run a promotion but

February 24, 2015 No Comments

Contest Considerations from a Technical Perspective

Eric Grimm, Senior Programmer, offers up this advice if you run a contest asking for user generated content. I’m going to focus on some UGC (user generated content) aspects from a programming and security side of the equation. Now repeat after me: NEVER TRUST USER INPUT! This is true with a simple form that only collects names and addresses, but requires even more caution when you are allowing large blocks

January 27, 2015 No Comments

3 Simple Things to Do to Prepare for Cyber Monday

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday fast approaching, what can you do to ensure your brand’s holiday promotion gets off to a great start? There is a lot at stake here — last year’s Cyber Monday sales topped $2.29 billion. Here are three simple things to do to ensure that your holiday promotion goes smoothly so your brand can capitalize on this year’s share of the Cyber Monday action.

October 31, 2014 No Comments

Ramping Up Your Promotional Web Site to Avoid a Crash

What do Target, Maserati, and SodaStream have in common? They all had web sites go down due to heavy traffic during a promotion. We frequently see companies like this spend thousands on advertisement development and placement, only to have the campaign go bad because someone forgot to plan for web site traffic surges. Don’t let this happen to you! If you are running a promotion that is driving traffic

September 26, 2014 No Comments

Knock Knock. Who’s There? Responsive Web Design!

Since responsive web design is all about affecting the appearance of a website, viewing a site that uses it well will help tremendously in understanding it. To see an example, launch Microsoft’s website in a new maximized window in any recent browser on a desktop or laptop computer. Now resize the window and slowly decrease its width, and watch how the site adjusts as the viewable area decreases. Images get

June 3, 2014 No Comments

We’ll Take Our Password Encryption with Salt, Thank You

Privacy, security and encryption of user data is crucial to Marden-Kane and our clients. Our team of programmers works hard to stay on top of the latest research and trends in data security to ensure the highest standards of privacy and security are met on all data we gather, pass and store on behalf of our clients. Today’s guest post, from our Senior Programmer Eric Grimm, covers why basic password

August 5, 2013 No Comments

How to Make Your Facebook Sweepstakes Application Work on a Mobile Device or Tablet

We built a simple sweepstakes as a custom Facebook application a few years ago for a client. The client loved it – until she realized a day before launch that the QR code she had set up to take her mobile users to the application was not working. “Why isn’t the site working?” she asked in a panic. The site was working. The only problem was that she had

February 21, 2013 1 Comment