New DNN Social Integrates Communities Into Corporate Websites to Optimize Customer Engagement

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwire - Mar 19, 2013) - DotNetNuke (DNN), whose award-winning web content management system (CMS) powers hundreds of thousands of websites around the world, today announced a social software solution aimed at optimizing customer engagement and loyalty through online communities. DNN Social gives businesses the ability to easily create and manage communities on their existing websites, giving end-users a one-stop destination for consuming content, exchanging ideas and interacting with other community members.

DNN Social enables businesses to effectively control the customer conversation by allowing it to take place on the corporate website, instead of driving customers to a third-party social site. Thriving user communities can help reduce support costs, drive product innovation and increase sales and brand awareness at an affordable price point. Available today, DNN Social is reinventing how companies optimize their web presence by combining industry-leading content and community management into a single, easy-to-use solution.

"Online communities represent a golden opportunity for you to deepen engagement with your prospects and customers in a leveraged, cost-effective way,"¹ said Kim Celestre, senior analyst serving technology marketing professionals at Forrester Research, Inc.

DNN has a strong expertise in communities, having spent the past 10 years building, interacting with and nurturing its own passionate community of more than one million registered members. Its membership comes from over 30 countries around the world and nearly 63 percent are very active in the community. In addition, more than 8,000 new members sign up per month.

"As the nation's number one provider of on-demand solutions for schools, colleges and universities, we need a seamless and intuitive way to manage our content and engage with our users. Simply put, DNN Social enables this for us and even goes beyond that to offer true extensibility to other platforms -- a feature much needed in the education space," said Nick Mirisis, director, marketing and business development for SchoolDude. "The value got us on board as a beta tester, but the impressive features and functionality are what will keep us on board in the long run."

"Stand-alone social solutions are cool to look at and talk about, but their value from true marketing and business development perspectives is very limited," said Navin Nagiah, president and CEO, DNN. "There is no better place to monitor customer behavior and engage with them than on a company's website, and thus their entire online experience on your website must become social -- not just in a community section that is powered by 'siloed' social software and sites."

DNN Social incorporates a broad suite of social features to enhance digital marketing, customer support, product development and e-commerce. These features include:

• Gamification: Companies can produce long-lasting fans through compelling experiences that occur directly on their sites -- increasing the level of engagement and interaction with the brand. Now, sites will be able to reward customers with reputation points, special privileges and recognition based on activity and contribution.
• Data Analytics: Powerful data analytics and reporting can optimize community health. With DNN Social, site managers will have access to a crisp and user-friendly dashboard view that allows for easy tracking of community engagement and optimizing engagement.
• Ideation: Solicit feedback and collaborate with customers to gather insights on ways to improve products and services. Crowd-sourcing ideation enables faster and better innovation and creates a sense of belonging and brand loyalty for customers.
• Q&A: Members submit or search for previously submitted questions and answers to gain input from peers and receive more "real" customer service. Members can answer others' questions and vote on helpfulness of answers. An added perk here is that this interaction can also add to product innovation by leveraging the interactions between customers in this Q&A environment.

DNN is the only company today that provides a proven CMS integrated with a social solution at a disruptive price point. Other vendors' offerings enable the creation of stand-alone sites, effectively "siloing" content and community. In addition, most other solutions charge per community user, effectively penalizing a company for building a successful community in the long term. Seeking to deliver the most cost-effective and intuitive experience, DNN Social's server-based licensing fee supports scalable growth of a company's customer engagement program.

¹"Your Community Upgrade: From Experiment To Strategic Approach", Forrester Research, Inc., July 12, 2012

For more information about DNN Social, please register for this webinar: http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Web-Seminars/DNN-Enhancements-032013.aspx.

About DotNetNuke Corp.
DotNetNuke (DNN) provides a suite of solutions that make designing, building and managing feature-rich sites and communities fast, easy and cost-effective. The DotNetNuke CMS is the foundation for over 750,000 websites worldwide. DNN Social, our newest solution, enables businesses to create immersive, interactive communities. Thousands of organizations like True Value Hardware, Bose, Cornell University, Glacier Water, Dannon, Delphi, USAA, NASCAR, Northern Health and the City of Denver have leveraged DNN to deploy highly engaging business-critical websites. Our rapid growth in product sales and deployments resulted in DotNetNuke Corp. being named one of the fastest growing private companies in America by Inc. Magazine in 2011 and 2012.

Get started building your online community today -- call us at (650) 288-3150 or visit dotnetnuke.com

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