Saving the World with Cause Marketing

When we think of cause marketing most of us visualize some type of purchase that supports a cause – a few of the more well-know such as ‘RED’ the Bono supported initiative to end AIDS in Africa by buying RED branded items like T-Shirts, sneakers, and even a phone. A variety of manufacturers work with RED and it is a very successful program. There are many other like Warby-Parker who donate a pair of glasses for every pair purchased and Tom’s Shoes who donates a pair of shoes for every pair purchased. I’m sure you can think of some you’ve seen as well; by purchasing a specific item you are supporting a cause.

Currently there is a big push to get people to purchase a special chalice (really that’s what they call them!) from Stella Artois brewing to support the efforts of water.org to bring clean, safe drinking water to the entire world. When you purchase a single chalice for $13.00+shipping from Amazon, Stella Artois will donate $3.13 to water.org which will supply drinking water to one person for FIVE years. Yep you read that correctly five years which works out to about 63¢ per year, obviously economies of scale are involved to make this work, but overall, it’s a heck of a good investment. In fact, since you probably don’t need or maybe even want a special Stella Artois chalice, why not donate the entire $13 to water.org and provide drinking water to over four people for five years?

Well, sadly that doesn’t seem to work as well. In fact, the whole concept of cause-marketing is designed to get people who might not usually donate, to do so or give more than they would normally, by offering a premium or ‘gift’ as an incentive; you might say we are just bribing people to do ‘the right thing’.

But cause marketing is more than that; at its core it is a mutually beneficial relationship between a business, a cause and the consumer. For a business, finding and supporting a cause that is important to them personally or aligns with their business values goes beyond just making a donation. While increasing awareness about a cause, the business is solidifying their brand loyalty. As statistics have proven over and over, people will buy a brand that supports a cause that is important to them.

The most common formats for cause/partner marketing are:

1) Buy One-Give One as described above this is the model that both Warby-Parker and Tom’s Shoes use, purchase the product and the manufacture directly provides a like product to needy individual, 2) Purchase a product and the manufacturer makes a donation to the associated cause, this is the model for the Stella Artois and water.org partnership and what RED uses, 3) Make a donation and get a coupon for a discount or free item or the item itself, and this is of course the very popular model used by Public Television and Radio.

While each model has its pros and cons for the most part they all work, in that the cause benefits from the purchase and the business benefits in both brand loyalty and possibly new customers. Moreover, it works because it allows the purchaser an opportunity to be altruistic while providing them with a reward for doing so. Without a doubt rewards are certainly the incentive that many of us need—whether that’s to file our taxes on time, make a healthier eating choice or support a worthy cause.

Whatever the motive, cause-marketing offers businesses and nonprofits the opportunity to work together to impact the world. Brands can start the conversation about a cause while increasing their bottom line and community standing. Each of these methods can be adapted to your business and favorite cause.

If you are a business of any size find a cause that has meaning to you and work together with a local nonprofit to implement one of the ideas, we outlined above or create something completely uniquely your own and let us know about it!

To read more about the Stella Artois and water.org program visit https://water.org/stellaartois/

http://thesocialmagazine.com/culture-style/can-cause-marketing-save-world

About the Author Leslie Riehm is the Vice President Corporate Communications at Digital Donations, Inc. Connect with Leslie and Digital Donations on Linked-In and follow her on Twitter.

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https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2018/03/13/Saving-the-World-with-Cause-Marketing

Well Positioned for Growth – Digital Donations adds Position Marketing Division

Impacting consumer/donor behavior has been at the forefront of every solution developed by Digital Donations. As you may have noticed in our most recent blog posts Big Data plays a major role in the marketing plans of every successful company. For many years, Digital Donations has been a leader in the payment processing industry with the added capability to solicit donations at the point-of-sale and ATMs, via mobile and online giving. This unique model combining social impact with daily business transactions generated its own share of data regarding consumer behavior and led naturally to the world of big data. In September, Digital Donations President Keith Orlean was interviewed by innovateLI, where he discussed “finding value for both the profit and nonprofit industries” with the integration of Big Data and how it could shape the future of customer attraction and retention in all formats – online, mobile and the brick-and-mortar purchasing experiences.

Evolving out of this long history in electronic payments and cause marketing, added to the ever-growing power of Big Data and its role in customer acquisition and retention, the Position Marketing division was launched.

Position Marketing connects brands and agencies with technology and resources to plan and execute an ‘Omni-Channel’ strategy, based on consumer activities such as purchasing history and decisions. These innovative solutions deliver a consistent user experience, influence consumer behavior and drive traffic across all devices. The ability to deliver accurate data and a reporting dashboard that provides multi-media attribution is a true differentiator. In fact there are already big doings at Position Marketing, learn more about our recently announced partnership with ReachLocal, A USA Today Network Company and Google Premier SMB partner & Facebook Marketing Partner. ReachLocal provides best in class marketing strategies and solutions that leverage multi-platform and multi device marketing in conjunction with powerful machine learning to deliver a more targeted customer to its clients.

By combining the world of Big Data with day-do-day business activities and integrating the cause marketing component, Position Marketing/Digital Donations is the solution partner for businesses and nonprofits. Ready to get started, for more information please visit, www.positionmktg.com or contact Digital Donations at 888-705-2220, ext.100.

About the Author Leslie Riehm is the Vice President Corporate Communications at Digital Donations, Inc. Connect with Leslie and Digital Donations on Linked-In and follow her on Twitter.

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https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2017/12/31/Well-Positioned-for-Growth-%E2%80%93-Digital-Donations-adds-Position-Marketing-Division

Traditions Brought to You by Businesses

Haven’t we all experienced the joy of a “Hallmark® Holiday”, you know a holiday you were pretty sure Hallmark® created to sell cards? And that’s not a negative commentary on Hallmark®, if anything as a marketer its envy! There is no better way to sell your products than create a niche and provide the exact product to fill it. In a word, it is GENIUS!!

With the most frantic purchasing retail season almost over for another year, this infographic from bizdaq* couldn’t be more appropriate and entertaining. Some of these I’m sure you know but quite a few were surprises to me. I’ve always associated the visual of Santa in the red suit with the big white beard with Coca-Cola’s holiday advertising, but I didn’t know they actually created the visual! In 1931 artist Haddon Sundbloom created the rendering we see to this day. I hope you enjoy learning a little more about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, why ‘Diamonds are Forever’ and Not Valentine’s Day started not by Hallmark®, florists, or candy-makers but ancient Romans. But you must give Hallmark credit, they sure capitalized on a great idea!

Share this with your friends and see how many more ‘holidays’ you can name and their origins, could be a fun game to play at holiday parties. And no matter what Uncle George says he probably did not invent a holiday honoring St. George the Dragon Slayer!

In whatever way you and your family celebrate this season, may it bring you peace, joy and prosperity~

*Infographic Source https://www.mybizdaq.com/traditions-invented-by-businesses

About the Author Leslie Riehm is the Vice President Corporate Communications at Digital Donations, Inc. Connect with Leslie and Digital Donations on Linked-In and follow her on Twitter.

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https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2017/12/20/Traditions-Brought-to-You-by-Businesses

The First 3 Steps to Use Big Data ‘To Serve Man’

One of my favorite classic episodes of The Twilight Zone™ from 1962 is “To Serve Man” aliens come to earth with a book. The aliens do all kinds of nice things and everyone starts to assume they are here to help us. It doesn’t take long to decipher the book’s title ‘To Serve Man’, and while scientists are trying to decipher the rest of it, earthlings are lining up to visit their planet. Turns out man can be a pretty appetizing dish when prepared correctly, the book COOK BOOK!

The concept of ‘serving man’ has become an integral part of every new technology, discovery and even, or maybe especially. the alien Big Data!

All this data is supposed to serve us, so we can better serve our clients. Digging through the ‘cookbook’ to get to what you want to ‘make’/accomplish can be a herculean task. And some days it feels like all that data and the ways you are supposed to use it may just eat you up! Googling ‘how much data is created/produced each day? provides volumes of information (HA!) including the projection that by 2020 about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet. More importantly of all that data IDC research indicates that 90% of the data produced is unstructured! That means there is a good chance that at least some portion of what you are looking for is simply floating around out there in no organized (read useful) fashion! Feeling overwhelmed, I know I do!

To help you and me too, start 2018 with a clearer focus on using and processing some of that data, I’ve worked through lots of the suggestions, input and articles out there to come up with The First Three Steps to Use Big Data to Serve Man that can help your organization and your clients. Accomplishing these three steps will provide the base you need to make sure the data you are using is the RIGHT data for you. Obviously, there is much more to the process so keep your eyes open for the next article in this series.

1. Focus – start by finding your focus, what do you want the data to do? Is your goal to bring in new clients? That’s an excellent way for data to work for your organization. The importance of defining your focus can’t be overemphasized. Without knowing what you want the data to provide in terms of information you can find yourself buried under the ever-growing morass of data, frustrated and just trying to breathe!

2. Refine – once you’ve determined your focus, you’ll want to refine it, so you don’t waste time digging through irrelevant data (of which there will be an enormous amount). Think about the idea above of bringing in new clients, what does that mean to your organization? Knowing exactly who your target prospects are and how those potential clients can most benefit by your services will help you find them. And hopefully at the same time eliminate the uninterested or non-target population.

3. Ask the Questions – the questions your [target] audience (prospects and clients) are really asking are what you should be answering. This can be a little trickier that it sounds, defining your target audience greatly narrows the data you will be considering. But it is by determining the questions your audience is asking that you’ll be putting that data to use. There are many ways to discover what your potential clients need and want to know, certainly the most direct is by asking your current clients what problem your product or service solved for them. Make sure you differentiate between what you ‘think’ they are asking and what they truly need. Remember your target audience has a problem to solve and your product/service is likely the solution they are looking for so, you must make sure they can find it and you!

With these three steps completed you are well on your way to determining the data that will help you grow your organization and ‘Serve Man’. In the next few articles we’ll look at the path data takes in its analytic journey, so you can use it to predict what’s coming.

As always, thanks for reading and please share any input, ask questions or make suggestions they are always welcome!

About the Author Leslie Riehm is the Vice President Corporate Communications at Digital Donations, Inc. Connect with Leslie and Digital Donations on Linked-In and follow us both on Twitter.

Here at Digital Donations we believe in connecting cause and commerce through innovative big data strategies and that’s exactly what we can do for your business. Give us a call at 888-705-2220, email us or visit our website to see how we can help you get a handle on big data!

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https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2017/12/13/The-First-3-Steps-to-Use-Big-Data-%E2%80%98To-Serve-Man%E2%80%99

Big Data Benefits Broken Down

Big data is only getting bigger but do you really understand the benefits and potential it provides for your company? This article by Data Science Series breaks down 10 examples of big data and what you can accomplish with it. 

http://datascienceseries.com/stories/ten-practical-big-data-benefits

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https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2017/11/28/Big-Data-Benefits-Broken-Down

What Do We Do With All That Data??

You don’t have to be a baseball fan or even a sports fan to get caught up in World Series fever, especially this year. The games played so far have been incredibly exciting and full of record breaking events. One amazing statistic after another has flashed across the screen as the game is being played. The ability to assimilate all the data so quickly and reflect that in the information on live television is nothing short of well, crazy! Big data is bringing big change to just about every activity, action or reaction almost as it happens. 

While this is an extreme example of data analysis, similar data gathering, and analysis is taking place in every field (no pun intended there). This is especially significant in marketing and sales; customer behaviors are one of the most important indicators of the success of marketing activities. Sales are of course the key indicator, not to mention goal, of all marketing; but knowing what appeals and works with potential and existing clients is extremely valuable. 

Today’s data not only goes far beyond the number of widgets purchased or returned, it can be as detailed as how far from a brick and mortar location a personalized, directed geo-add can have the greatest impact. Is it five miles, one mile, as you turn into the shopping center or as you enter the store? Does it matter if you are an existing customer or a potential new one? What about the time of day or day of the week, month or year? 

The data being gathered in today’s world can answer all those questions and do it far more quickly than in the past. By providing actionable information businesses can quickly change to reflect customer purchasing. Does the volume of customers who purchase rotisserie chicken increase 23% on the second Tuesday of the month between 5:45 and 6:00 PM? The business responds by having 23% more chicken hot and ready to go at that time. Want to increase sales on Wednesdays and Thursdays, send geo-marketing reminders to shoppers near the business to drive up sales. If that doesn’t work, the business can consider adding a discount coupon the next cycle to increase buyers. In short big data provides enough information to change marketing behavior quickly enough to truly enable just-in-time production processes.

Using big data to impact marketing and sales is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ but is rapidly becoming a necessary part of business strategy whether online or a physical presence. Small businesses are joining the big guys in gathering and analyzing data to positively impact marketing, sales, business planning and their future. 

I’m not sure how much it adds to the game to have the individual player statistics updated with every at-bat or pitch for this game, this series, the post-season, the regular season, the player’s entire career and on and on and on. But without a doubt it demonstrates the volume of data being produced and, what a game changer it is and will continue to be! 

Oh, and me, I’m pulling for the Astros—Houston strong!

About the Author Leslie Riehm is the Vice President Corporate Communications at Digital Donations, Inc. Connect with Leslie and Digital Donations on Linked-In and follow her on Twitter.

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https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2017/11/01/What-Do-We-Do-With-All-That-Data

What’s the BIG deal about BIG data?

We see it everywhere in the business world today – BIG DATA – so why is it such a big deal? It’s a big deal because it is changing the way businesses work at their very core. The information and data we are constantly bombarded with from our ‘always on’ world is shaping sales, marketing, fundraising, investing, and entertainment with the potential to impact every business transaction!

But there is one big problem with BIG DATA, its big! In fact, for most of us it is way too big and too much and too often. We try to soak in a few nuggets from this overwhelming fountain and occasionally we stumble across something that can be useful in our business or personal lives. We really don’t understand how we can possibly assimilate all that data into useful and actionable information. With BIG DATA becoming more and more an integral part of how you do business, it is even more important to make sure the data you are analyzing is the right data, relevant to you and your business.

The basic business model for acquiring and retaining clients or donors has always included a component of gathering feedback and evaluating what you learn so you can apply it to your business. It could be a very time-consuming and lengthy process. The information was often woefully outdated by the time it was processed. Changes to products and how they were marketed, were not able to be made quickly enough to reflect consumers’ new interests and product feedback. Fast forward to today and with all the information we have at our fingertips. Every business can take that feedback, make the changes and, just like that the modified product based on market response is available. The consumer gets what they want and businesses growth booms, right? Not exactly...there is a key component that’s missing – all that disparate data must be integrated to provide usable information. As the old lexicon says, you can’t compare apples and oranges! Data analysis and modeling is big business. The ability to understand consumer behavior and better target your audience has proven to reduce marketing costs and increase sales. The data must be accurate and trustworthy for it to be actionable, providing your business with analysis that has value. The thought of managing all this data is overwhelming. Fortunately, there are a multitude of data aggregators and a plethora of products and services solutions to help you analyze the data, not to mention industry experts to tell you what data you should be considering. Over five million developers worldwide are working on big data and advanced analytics today. Yes, BIG DATA is a big business, currently the big data market is worth about $60bn with a growth factor of 25% over the next few years. It’s time for your business to get busy with big data. Amazon is an ideal example as for how big data can be used to scale the sales. By using the data to personalize your interaction, and adding that ‘other people who viewed this also bought’ section sales went up by 30% using the shopping experience of others. BIG DATA is not just for big companies, in fact with the introduction of cost effective cloud-based tools BIG DATA can level the playing field. The Big Deal About Big Data is this, no matter the size of your organization the data information exists that you need to make decisions about the future of your business. And as more and more solutions become available at reasonable price points you might want to get started now!

About the Author Leslie Riehm is the Vice President Corporate Communications at Digital Donations, Inc.

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https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2017/10/05/Whats-the-BIG-deal-about-BIG-data