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 The information was often woefully outdated by the time it was processed.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

Micro-Influencers Can Be the Right Influencers for You

An influencer marketing campaign is pretty much a word-of-mouth campaign – on steroids! Because a voice on social media is potentially ‘heard’ by a large volume of people, it is a personal referral on a much larger scale. With this increased scale comes a greater need to make sure the person doing the referral is the right person, for your business, your cause and intended audience; you can learn more about influencers and their impact from our previous blog post.

Realty stars, celebrities, professional athletes, and social-media rock stars are the more visible influencers and the ones we often think of first. The issue with these types of ‘star influencers’ is the cost is way outside the budget of most businesses, even more so for small businesses and causes.

Enter the micro-influencer, typically defined as a social-media leader with between 1k to 5k followers. Depending on your own existing social media presence that may seem like either a lot of followers or very, very few. But that is not the point, statistically micro-influencers communicate more than twenty times each week with their followers. More over 80%+ of consumers are "highly likely to follow a recommendation made by a micro influencer."

That means that these micro-influencers are ‘influencing’ every day. Most of what they post include branding, so not just awareness but trust in the brand is transmitted to their followers. Micro-influencers tend to charge much less than the ‘big guys’ which means you can reach the same or even a larger, more diverse audience with several micro-influencers at a better price point. Now lest you think that this is ‘selling out’ consider that micro-influencers are not likely to be persuaded to recommend or market a product or service they don’t support. Many of these micro-influencers are millennials and that’s just not something they tend to do and probably most of all, to the micro-influencer, they don’t want to risk offending or losing their followers. To keep

their loyal followers, just as a business they must completely believe in what they are recommending.

While the reach of a micro-influencer is smaller, it is a more targeted audience. These millennial micro-influencers are following their passions, making their voices and recommendations completely authentic. The range of these interests can be just about anything, a cause like animals or the environment, products like cars, fashion, fitness, travel or personal services such as coaching and meditation. Once you identify the correct niche for your business or cause, you can then determine who the micro-influencers are in that space. You want a micro-influencer to champion your business or cause who is genuine and trustworthy. You might want to start your search on Instagram, the most popular social media site for micro-influencer, followed by Twitter and Facebook. Get more detailed info on finding the right influencers from this post.

More and more businesses are using influencer marketing, probably most of your competitors. Searches for the term “influencer marketing” have more than tripled this year. Find your micro-influencers, get your product or service into their hands and have them create content that you can integrate into your marketing efforts. Then reap the benefits of influencer marketing with micro-influencers.

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/2017/09/29/Micro-Influencers-Can-Be-the-Right-Influencers-for-You

Digital Donations Technologies Launches Crowdfunding Campaign

Funds to be used for Digital Wallet and Cryptocurrency Development

Melville, NY September 17, 2017 – Digital Donations Technologies announced today the launch of an equity fundraising campaign to raise up to $5MM via Crowdfunder.com. Funds from this round will be used for the expanded development of PayGIV and CoinGIV, an innovative fundraising technology. Together these tools, a digital wallet and a cryptocurrency, allow donors to predesignate a specific charity and donation amount, creating automated sustainable fundraising growth. Keith Orlean, CEO and Co-Founder, stated “In addition to PayGIV and CoinGIV, our GIV Ecosystem includes point of sale, ATMs and mobile devices. The unique and essential component of our technology is Partner Rewards. By joining cause with commerce, a donation request can be added to any financial transaction and provide a brand sponsored reward to the donor, increasing the benefit to the donor, the cause and the business. Charitable giving is a $400BN industry that receives 71% of its donations from individuals. Ease of donating is especially important to millennials who love online and social giving. Having recently surpassed Baby Boomers in population, reaching this audience on their preferred platforms (social, mobile and digital portals) is the future of charitable giving. Raising capital is the next step in funding our growth as we prepare to become a publicly traded entity." Founded in 2014, Digital Donations is committed to assist non-profit industry with breakthrough and cost-effective fundraising technologies. The key to the business is its innovative GIV Ecosystem which integrates at point-of-sale, mobile devices, ATMs and e-commerce checkouts. Through this integration, the GIV technology enables consumers to make charitable donations while making a financial transaction. To review the opportunity to invest in the Future of Giving click or copy this link.https://www.crowdfunder.com/digital-donations-inc-/invest # # # #Forward Looking Statements Statements in this press release including statements regarding either parties’ beliefs, expectations, intentions or strategies for the future, may be considered "forward-looking statements". All forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the plans, intentions and expectations reflected in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, intensified competition, operating problems and their impact on revenues and profit margins, anticipated future business strategies and financial performance, anticipated future number of customers, business prospects, legislative developments and similar matters.

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https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2017/09/26/Digital-Donations-Technologies-Launches-Crowdfunding-Campaign

Big News on Big Data at Digital Donations

Digital Donations co-founder Keith Orlean recently spoke with InnovateLI, about big data and how he sees transitioning their nonprofit solution into the for-profit arena.

The proprietary data-crunching solution from Digital Donations is designed to capture the information from potential donors and now, customers who visit a website but don’t complete the forms, etc. This unique tool allows you to recapture the potentially lost data and create a connection to these website visitors. Once you have this basic data, Big Data follows with shopping, buying and donating habits. Add in location/beacon technology and a you’ll have a whole new world of actionable data. You can focus on the specific demographics of your ideal customer or donor to provide a truly personalized experience.

>> Read the entire article!Digital Donations is a leading provider of state-of-the-art alternative fundraising solutions connecting cause with commerce in the communities where we work and live.InnovateLIis an online source for information “inside the new economy

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/2017/09/12/Big-News-on-Big-Data-at-Digital-Donations

Influencer Marketing – Finding the ‘Right’ Influencers

There is one thing in marketing that you can count on change. Social media marketing is no different, in fact if anything it changes more quickly and with far more enthusiasm! The latest trend is ‘influencer marketing’ which is exactly what it says: using someone with ‘influence’ to market your products/services. But just what is an ‘influencer’ and how do you find the right one(s) for you?

Social media has created their own form of celebrities, some of whom are not unlike television’s reality stars. But the influencer your business (or nonprofit) is looking for is more than an internet sensation, you want someone who has true influence in your niche via their blog, vlog or other strong social media presence. You aren’t looking for someone with the most followers, but with the appreciable influence.

Most influencers focus on a specific area, there aren’t many generalists. That’s a good thing because its increasingly more difficult to be one, especially on social media. You are looking for the experts, the voices of an industry or product; their opinions, thoughts and other input are used by their followers to make purchase decisions.

The number one reason you want to get into social media influencer marketing are of course, the millennials. As you likely already know the millennials are the largest segment of the marketplace, outpacing the baby boomers. And the generations after them, are even more engaged in social media. They aren’t interested in being sold to or told what to buy, they want to do their own research and they trust the opinions of their peers, if they aren’t just trying to ‘sell a product’.

Influencers must have an authentic voice that shares information and advice they can relate to and depend on. These aren’t usually the celebrities they follow, though some do have an authentic voice and are influential, but more frequently experts in their

niche. This confirms the idea of authentic influencer vs. high volume of followers.

True influencers will only share their opinion of a brand if they truly believe in it. They aren’t looking for a pay-off, in fact you will often hear them saying “this product was sent to me to test by the manufacturer and it just doesn’t live up to its hype. So where do you find your social media marketing influencer who is genuine, has an authentic voice and is a reliable source?

First you must know who your target audience is, if you haven’t clearly defined that or it needs a bit more work, consider creating buyer personas. Shopify® the source for entrepreneurs, has an excellent article on the subject. Once you are very clear on who you want to influence, you can start the hunt for the right influencer.

Consider the following three factors when evaluating potential influencers:

Who is their audience, does it reflect your buyer persona?Is the audience engaged with commentary and questions, how often is content shared by their followers (this helps spread the influencer through peer communication)Are there any ‘red flags’ about the influencer that you feel don’t align with your mission or message? You want an influencer who positively reflects your brand image.

The right social media influencer(s) can help you get your brand in front of your chosen audience. With an impactful message in the influencer’s own voice, you can expect to see positive result and significant return on your effort.

Now get out there and find your social media marketing influencer! Read our previous blog post “Just How Much Impact do Influencers Have?” for additional insight.

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/2017/09/11/Influencer-Marketing-Finding-the-Right-Influencers

Just How Much Impact do ‘Influencers’ Have?

Marketing has always embraced those with influence (real or perceived) to help raise brand awareness. Sports figures, actors, and other well-known personalities tell you that they use this or that product or service, or support a specific charity and you should too. But times have changed, it is no longer enough to compensate a well-known personality to ‘hawk’ your brand or nonprofit; the connection must be real!

The use of influencers in digital marketing continues to grow, and even more so with nonprofits and their partner’s cause campaigns. The question of their effectiveness and value can be very subjective, but the recent Influence Impact Report from Allison+Partners i has some very measurable statistics that clearly demonstrate the impact of digital influencers. The findings illustrate a growing audience that is both digitally connected and deeply invested in charitable issues, signaling influencers as an increasingly important consideration for your cause marketing strategy.

These digital influencers inspire their followers to commit money, loyalty and their time to the causes they are championing. The findings clearly show the ever-growing ‘fanbase’ of digital influencers is seriously committed to philanthropy and making a positive difference in the world.

As they say, ‘the numbers don’t lie’ so consider these findings:

35% of the influencer’s audience engaged with the recommended cause;

of that number, more than 50% donated and/or shared the cause;

37% actually volunteered with the cause!

It is important to note that the influencer’s personal connection is a key factor in driving consumer actions. The level of trust that the influencer commands is based on the influencer volunteering with the cause and sharing stories about the personal impact of the cause, whether their own or that of another person.

“Brands and nonprofits are investing heavily in influencer programs with the hope of shaping beliefs and inspiring action for their initiatives,” said Scott Pansky, co-founder and head of the social impact practice at Allison+Partners. “The data shows that working with digital influencers is making an impact, but that impact is dependent on finding the right influencers who can tell your story in a way that is authentic to them and their followers.”

This is a very important consideration, you need to find the ‘right’ influencer for your brand and they must be authentic in their support and commitment.

Some of the additional insights from the study include:

How authenticity and personal stories drive engagement and impact for cause effortsWhat brands should consider when developing a cause partnershipWhat types of content and channels are most successful at promoting brand-cause partnershipsThe power of tapping local influencersHow to convert followers into advocates by creating content they are willing to share

Without a doubt the right digital influencer, truly committed to the cause has a huge impact on their followers’ decisions on who to support and the actions the take. Ignore them at your own peril!

i The latest Influence Impact Report, “Powerful Connections: How Influence, Empathy and Engagement Have Transformed Cause in the Digital Era,” is available for download.

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https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2017/08/09/Just-How-Much-Impact-do-Influencers-Have

How Do We Get There From Here?

This recent article in Forbes really got my attention, First of course because I’m a marketer and the author is the CM&CO for Mastercard but, also because I believe in cause marketing and the confluence of cause and commerce is at the heart of the Digital Donations ecosystem.  The author, Raja Rajamannar states “As marketers we have long championed cause marketing programs as an impactful way for brands to get involved, but our programs can go further by evolving them from “nice-to-dos” to “must-dos.” The question is how do we get there from here?

The goal beyond just marketing your business as aligned with a cause is to develop a long-term plan where ‘doing good as part of doing business’ is an ingrained component of your business strategy. 

It’s clear that our world faces huge challenges – clean water, financial services, poverty, education and saving the planet. The millennials (and GenZ) look to businesses as a force for good and their most favored (read purchased) brands are engaging with social issues earning their loyalty and trust. As more consumers decide to support causes with their purchasing decisions how and why you associate your brand is a key consideration in your planning.

The article makes several salient points on how to do this ‘right’:

The Right Cause.“A carefully chosen, brand-relevant cause can grow and evolve over time, magnifying the impact on benefactors and the company.”

Before you jump on the latest bandwagon for a noble cause do some research. If your alignment is to be authentic the cause should make sense in your business model. A consumer isn’t likely to ‘see’ the connection between a purchasing a specific motor oil and educating children in rural America. You can create or force a connection, but a more natural cause might be pollution in the area where the children live.

Set — and achieve — measurable, transparent goals. “. . . clarity around the consumers’ role in helping achieve these goals, is probably your most important piece of communication.”

Consumers want to know how buying your product or service is integral for the success of the cause. The most direct connections are the easiest to understand such as buy one, give one. There is no doubt that by buying this product a second one is donated to the cause; it’s a clear connection that’s easy to understand.

Partner appropriately as they become an extension of your brand. “Not all partners are equal, even if they seemingly have the same mission.”

The volume of charitable organizations that share the same mission or vision is enormous. Some are more successful than others and are more targeted in that overall goal. Consider the approach and specific solution each NPO proposes and what how that can become part of your brand and overall business strategy.

Look for sustainable programs beyond the donation. “By choosing and establishing longstanding relationships with the right non-profit partners, cause marketing programs have the potential to have a dramatic cumulative effect.”

This is the goal of any long-term cause marketing program. The growth of what started as a small, locally based program can over time expand beyond the community, across the country and around the globe. Consider the impact a local before school meal program can have – hungry children cannot pay attention and learn. No longer focusing on their empty belly translates into doing better in school, better jobs and stopping the cycle of poverty.

Clearly, we are making an effort to come together to solve problems and create a better life. By carefully choosing the right partner for a long-term, growing cause and commerce alliance every brand can have a positive impact and profitable business.

The referenced article appeared on the Forbes.com site July 10, 2017

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https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2017/07/20/How-Do-We-Get-There-From-Here