Research has revealed that 94% of consumers prefer to do business with companies that give back in some way, but only 16% believe that businesses have actually made a positive social impact. Moreover, over half of all consumers (55%) have switched brands in favor of ones that they believed to be more socially responsible. The significance of this is even greater when one considers that when people switch, they tend to bring friends and family along with them.
This is especially true of socially-connected Millennials. Not only are Millennials social media savvy consumers, they also pay particularly close attention to the types of businesses where they spend their money. In fact, this generation consists of the most ‘conscientious consumers’ since the Baby Boomers, and Millennials are expected to outspend Boomers by 2017.
These data underscore the opportunity that cost effective cause- or values-based marketing presents, as well as the risks of doing nothing. However, a word of caution: An ad hoc approach to this kind of marketing can inadvertently result in activities that prove to be expensive, ineffective and possibly even illegal. (Most states have laws regarding what businesses can and cannot do with respect to charitable giving.)
Charitable Checkout’s ‘Rewarded Giving’ cause marketing platform offers businesses of all sizes easy access to this important and growing market segment: ‘Conscientious Consumers.’
Rewarded Giving
Charitable Checkout’s Rewarded Giving technology enables businesses to design and deploy campaigns that benefit whatever charities they happen to support while measurably enhancing their public image and driving customer acquisition, retention, and sales.
When consumers give to a business-endorsed cause, they automatically receive discount coupon rewards and are publicly thanked by the business in social media. Businesses that use our service enjoy an increase in positive social media posts and shares, an increase in sales (13% of donors redeem their rewards), and capture actionable user data. Moreover, all the financial and regulatory functions are seamlessly handled in the background by the platform.
The platform powers campaigns for entities such as like Halo, Purely For Pets; HGTV; Live Nation; Omaha Steaks; Shakira; United Way and more. It simultaneously offers businesses a new and fresh approach to relationship, social media, values, and discount marketing without any of the potential obstacles.
Technical Options
There are two basic approaches to getting the Rewarded Giving platform working for your clients.
1. First, is our templatized campaign creation tools which you or your clients can manage yourselves; or we can do it for you. These tools enable the creation of campaigns that can be deployed to any web page via <iframe> embed codes and/or one-click install to any Facebook Fan Page.
2. The second approach involves custom implementations using our API. The API enables a variety of specialized features such as:
• Integration into e-commerce, either as a Rewarded Giving donation SKU/item, or embedded into the checkout flow.
• Adding rewards to an existing donation at checkout feature,
• “Giving Squads,” our real-time social media and charitable giving contesting module.
More Than Just Happy Clients
When you help your clients set up their Rewarded Giving cause marketing functionality, everyone wins:
• They get recognized for being a socially responsible business while ramping up sales and consumer insights,
• Deserving causes gain in awareness and donation dollars (of which we don’t touch a penny), and
• Technologists get happy clients and financial rewards from Charitable Checkout.
Strategic Alliance Options
Our Affiliate Program offers rewards to technologists that deliver our service to their clients. If you refer people to our Basic (DIY) Subscription Service, we pay for each Free Trial sign-up and for each conversion to a paid subscription.
Whereas our Affiliate Program targets prospects for our DIY service (clients customize their own campaigns using their own creative), our Partner Program provides an extra level of service to your clients, additional feature flexibility and greater earnings potential. This Program is designed to refer businesses to our “hands-on” offerings.
Under our “Assisted Launch” service level, we build and maintain campaigns on an ongoing basis for your clients using our templatized campaign creation tools. We can work directly with your prospects on their campaigns and basic campaign support and analysis (e.g., reporting), or with you on their behalf as you deem appropriate. We are also able to price out custom implementations based on your specific requirements.
Not only will your clients get a 20% discount on these “hands on” offerings, we are currently paying Partners 20% of the setup and monthly fees for our “Assisted Launch” program and 20% of the gross profits on custom implementations.
For more information or to signup, go to http://get.charitablecheckout.com/affiliate or write to support@charitablecheckout.com.
This is a guest post by Jay B. Ziskrout, the Founder & CEO of Charitable Checkout, whose ‘Rewarded Giving’ cause marketing platform enables companies of any size to launch highly social branded charitable giving programs that are both good for the world, and good for business.
Having worked for years helping major brands engage consumers through music and entertainment (as COO of CMJ Network), this former performing musician and international music industry executive come tech entrepreneur decided to pursue his vision for connecting businesses with consumers around shared values.
Jay previously founded LatinoVision.com which innovated in the area of digital content promotion and delivery, launched Epitaph Records Europe in The Netherlands as Managing Director, and served as VP Promotion for Arista/BMG where he was responsible for numerous #1 hits. His career began as a founding member of seminal band Bad Religion.
Get in touch with Jay directly at jziskrout@charitablecheckout.com, follow him on Twitter at @JBZiskrout or connect with him on LinkedIn.