The Red Cross has raised over $5m for the Haitian earthquake in the last 36 hours. Everybody's talking about and writing about it.
If you want to manage your social customers and raise a bunch of money for Haiti too, here's how to do it.
1. Triple-Donation Model For New Customers, Past Customers and Prospects: Allow new customers to donate as a part of your purchase workflow (eCommerce, retail, etc.) and allow them to pay either in cash/VISA/MC or by SMS. Allow past customers to evangelize your product easily, and offer a donation for doing it (i.e. post a Facebook photo of you in your Levi's and Levis will donate $1 to Haitian earthquake relief). Allow prospects the opportunity to go in-store and do something to evangelize your brand in exchange for a donation. That's right: allow people who have never, ever bought anything from you to leverage a donation from you, in exchange for their contact info (via SMS).
2. Existing Multi-Channel SMS Partner: If you don't have an existing relationship with a rock-solid SMS partner (we love MsgMe , Vibes , or ExactTarget for this stuff)
3. Viral Platform: Focus all customer evangelism on select social platforms that yield quick, immediate viral response. Twitter and Facebook come to mind, but SMS is even appropriate in some case.
4. Everything Reports To The sCRM: If all of this data isn't going into a social customer relationship management system for later use, then this whole effort will have been a win for earthquake relief, but not a win/win for your brand and the people in need. Track the data, and help people and your brand at the same time.
If you're in the midst of trying to launch one of these programs over the weekend and you're really stuck, call us at 888.565.METZ.
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Adam Metz is the Principal at Metz Consulting.