Cause Marketing in Your Signature Line

MyContactCard, which builds web apps, has just launched CauseMail, a souped-up HTML signature line for your emails that includes contact information using branding from a select group of charities and generates a yearly $6.48 donation to the chosen charity.

The service costs an individual $12.95 a year. It is being marketed to both individuals and charities.

The pitch MyContactCard is making to charities goes like this: “100,000 supporters sending just 10 emails a day deliver over 365 million graphic, clickable impressions a year with the Cause branding, culture and donate now links.”

I like this idea and I like the execution. But frankly if that pitch represents their target market, they’re barking up the wrong tree. The number of nonprofits in the United States with 100,000 supporters who are online is a pretty small number.

Tens of millions of Americans gave more than $306 billion to charity in 2007. One third of that that goes to churches. The rest goes to literally millions of 501(c)(3)s.

I couldn’t find the actual number, but I’d be surprised if the average American donor gives to much fewer than a dozen charities a year. To put it directly, American give generously to charity, but their charitable giving is diluted among numerous entities.

Moreover, the charities that do have 100,000 supporters almost certainly have their own IT departments [and know how to rent services from Amazon S3, too]. The IT crew at St. Jude Child Research Hospital, to cite one, is certainly capable of putting together something just like MyContactCard.

But there are hundreds of thousands of charities with smaller lists and no IT department who could potentially benefit from MyContactCard. I’ll bet the people at MyContactCard figure that out pretty soon.

So should you subscribe to MyContactCard? That depends on you. Currently there are nine causes on board at MyContactCard:

ASPCA
Green Day
Lance Armstrong’s LiveSTRONG
One
Special Olympics
Sea Shepard Conservation Society
Stop Global Warming
Surfrider Foundation
Wounded Warrior.

If the Surfrider Foundation moves you, $12.95 a year isn’t terribly expensive. If all your emails carry the Surfrider Foundation’s branding, there’s probably a halo effect that redounds on you.

But if none of these causes move you but you like the idea of cause marketing on your signature line, consider doing what I do.

The final line in my email signature reads: “Support the Children’s Organ Transplant Association. Donate at COTA.org.”

Part 2: How Chili's Used Cause-Related Marketing to Raise $8.2 million for St. Jude

[Bloggers Note: In this second half of this post I discuss the nuts and bolts of how Chili's motivates support from its employees and managers and how St. Jude 'activates' support from Chili's. Read the first half here.] How does St. Jude motivate support from Chili’s front line employees and management alike? They call it ‘activation’ and they do so by the following: They share stories of St. Jude patients who were sick and got better thanks to the services they received at the hospital. Two stories in particular are personal for Chili’s staff. A Chili’s bartender in El Dorado Hills, California named Jeff Eagles has a younger brother who was treated at St. Jude. In both 2005 and 2006 Eagles was the campaign’s biggest individual fundraiser. John Griffin, a manager at the Chili’s in Conway, Arkansas had an infant daughter who was treated for retinoblastoma at St. Jude. They drew on the support Doug Brooks… the president and CEO of Brinker International, Chili’s parent co...

Chili’s and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

I was in Chili’s today and I ordered their “Triple-Dipper,” a three appetizer combo. While I waited for the food, I noticed another kind of combo. Chili’s is doing a full-featured cause-related marketing campaign for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. There was a four-sided laminated table tent outlining the campaign on the table. When the waitress brought the drinks she slapped down Chili’s trademark square paper beverage coasters and on them was a call to action for an element of the campaign called ‘Create-A-Pepper,’ a kind of paper icon campaign. The wait staff was all attired in black shirts co-branded with Chili’s and St. Jude. The Create-A-Pepper paper icon could be found in a stack behind the hostess area. The Peppers are outlines of Chili’s iconic logo meant to be colored. I paid $1 for mine, but they would have taken $5, $10, or more. The crayons, too, were co-branded with the ‘Create-A-Pepper’ and St. Jude’s logos. There’s also creatapepper.com, a microsite, but again wi...

A Clever Cause Marketing Campaign from Snickers and Feeding America

Back in August I bought this cause-marketed Snickers bar during my fourth trip of the day to Home Depot. (Is it even possible to do home repairs and take care of all your needs with just one trip to Home Depot / Lowes ?) Here’s how it works: Snickers is donating the cost of 2.5 million meals to Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. On the inside of the wrapper is a code. Text that code to 45495… or enter it at snickers.com… and Snickers will donate the cost of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million additional meals. The Feeding America website says that each dollar you donate provides seven meals. So Snickers donation might be something like $500,000. But I like that Snickers quantified its donations in terms of meals made available, rather than dollars. That’s much more concrete. It doesn’t hurt that 3.5 million is a much bigger number than $500,000. I also like the way they structured the donation. By guaranteeing 2.5 million meals, the risk of a poor...

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