Two weeks ago I wrote about Maggie Keenan, a graduate of my Six Figure Cause Marketing Program and happy owner of Cause Marketing for Dummies. She’s launched a pinup program with her KFC and Dairy Queen stores in southeast Georgia that’s doing very well.

I’ve asked Maggie to stop by and update us in the comments section of this post.

Maggie was kind enough to record this interview with some of the key people involved in the program. These wonderful supporters talk about so many of the things that are important to a successful cause marketing program I just had to share it with you!

• A sincere commitment to the program’s success.
• A recognition that local businesses should support local causes.
• Each store involved in the program has a tangible goal to achieve.
• Each location has an in-store ambassador to motivate and track employee success.
• Store managers volunteered at a Salvation Army to see firsthand where the money they raise will go.
• The importance of THE ASK. Customers won’t support the program unless you ask them!
• Incentives for employees as a thank you for their efforts.

I love when students put their education to good use.

Maggie Keenan, a branding and cause marketing consultant in Savannah, Georgia, is a graduate of my Six Figure Cause Marketing course, which shows nonprofits and businesses how to develop and execute an effective and lucrative cause marketing program.

Maggie gets an A+ for her latest effort: a regional cause marketing program to support the Chatham-Savannah Authority for the Homeless, Inc. Hodges Management Company, which owns the local KFCs, KFC/TacoBells and DQ Grill & Chills, approached the Housing Authority about doing something to help the homeless this holiday season.

Thanks to Maggie, they came up with a great campaign: Dishing Out Meals: Fighting to End Hunger & Homelessness in Our Community.

You can read all about Maggie’s outstanding cause marketing program on her blog. But let me take a moment to mention some of the things I really love about it.

It embraces the easiest and most lucrative type of cause marketing: point of sale. The pin-up below sold for a buck. While there are other types of cause marketing Maggie could have recommended to the partners, point of the sale is truly the best, especially for local programs like this one. I’ve raised as much as $300,000 in just a few weeks with pinups.

It taps every asset the business had for giving. Realizing that the pinup wasn’t the best option for drive thru customers, Maggie created a value card with a QR code that takes customers directly to the Homeless Authority website for more information or to make a donation. Great thinking, Maggie! [One suggestion: The mobile donation page isn't optimized for smartphones. Check out what my friend Bob Jones at Give.mobi can do to make this a better experience and raise you more money!]

It battled indifference and apathy from the outset. Have you ever been asked to buy a pinup but the total lack of interest from the cashier convinced you that he or she didn’t really care if you did? Hodges Management Company did their best to ensure that apathy and indifference wouldn’t be part of this program. All general managers spent a Saturday learning and volunteering for the cause, an experience they’ll share with their employees.

I’m proud of everyone involved in this program, and I’m eager to see the results when it’s done. Most of all, I’m really proud of Maggie Keenan. She’s a great student, asked lots of good questions and kept in touch with me to make sure she didn’t make any of the many, many mistakes I made in my first programs.

Congratulations, Maggie! I’m sure this won’t be that last post I’ll write on one of your successful cause marketing campaigns!

Maggie learned about creating and executing point of sale cause marketing programs in my Six Figure Cause Marketing program. You can too! Buy the recorded version of 6FCM for just $99!

Side by side is the front and back of the Bruins' pinup. The QR code is on the back.

Back in January I talked about Quora and how it could be a resource to consumers who had questions about a cause marketing promotions, and an asset to causes that wanted to be more transparent about their programs.

This month my fellow Dummies writer Joanna MacDonald and I are putting Quora to the test with a QR code on our latest pinup that will be sold at iParty and Fuddruckers locations throughout New England.

Trying scanning this QR code with the QR reader on your smartphone.

When consumers scan the code with their smartphones (try it yourself!) it takes them to this Quora page where they can comment or ask a question about the campaign.

We plan to monitor the page regularly so we can answer questions quickly and accurately.

The QR code links to this Quora page where consumers can get timely answers to their questions about the program.

To answer common questions about the program we also included a link to a  frequently asked questions page on Quora.

We used the FAQ page on Quora to answer common questions about the program.

How many people will scan the QR code? I’m not sure. A small percentage of shoppers most likely. But they may represent regular givers that want more information about the programs they’re supporting at the register.

Will Quora be confusing to shoppers that don’t know what the heck it is? That’s a good question. Probably like 99% of the people out there have no clue what Quora is. But if they view Quora as it tool that gets them the answers they want it might not matter what the name is.

What else can we do to make our Quora page more effective? I think we could include a link to a video on the SPARK Center, the program at my hospital that will benefit from the program.

To make our program easier to find, I also added some tags to the top of the entry, although I really don’t expect people to find our page by searching Quora. Most will go to the page directly from the QR code.

Or they may find the page via search engines.

A Google search on “spark center bmc” lists our Quora page as sixth on search results. Queries on other words and terms associated with the promotion also showed up in the top results.  If consumers are searching online for information on this cause marketing program, they’ll most likely find it via their favorite search engine thanks to Quora.

That’s another good reason to give Quora a try.

I’m interested to hear what you think about this experiment!

One of the greatest feelings in the world is when someone comes up to you out of the blue and says they’ve been reading your blog for some time and learned something they’ve been able to put into practice.

That happen to me yesterday when I spoke to the Women in Philanthropy in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

After Joanna and I spoke, Gwen Majercak from Cooley Dickinson Hospital in nearby Northhampton, MA shared the above pinup with me that sold in local stores for $1 and raised $10,000 last year.

Right on the pinup it says the funds raised from the program supported medical care to 9,000 newborns born to teens at the hospital.

Gwen’s success is impressive as Cooley Dickinson is far from the big city and the big chain retailers. Nevertheless, Gwen put together a great program and she’s busy planning this year’s drive.

One thing I really liked about this pinup is the perforated round icon at the top that pops out and is displayed in the store with the person’s name. The rest of the pinup, along with some important facts Gwen put on the back, goes home with the consumer.

I’m really looking forward to hearing the results from this year’s program! Congrats to Gwen and Cooley Dickinson Hospital.

Interested in learn more about point-of-sale programs and other cause marketing fundraisers? Sign up for one of my cause marketing bootcamps at  CharityHowTo or join me for my three-part training program Six Figure Cause Marketing.

Want to learn more about cause marketing? Do these things right now:

1. Sign up for my bi-monthly newsletter (top right of this page).
2. Buy my book, Cause Marketing for Dummies, and get some great free stuff.
3. Sign-up for Six Figure Cause Marketing for the ultimate one-on-one cause marketing training! 

Last January I wrote a post on What is Cause Marketing? that got a lot of great feedback. Over the past year I’ve gone back to that post many time and reread the comments again and thought about how I was defining cause marketing.

I felt I had the first part right.

Cause marketing is a partnership between a nonprofit and a for-profit for mutual profit

What I thought needed redefining was just what it encompassed. In last year’s post I wrote that cause marketing involved three types of programs: point-of-sale, percentage-of-sale and licensing.

This year, I’m much more open to including most activities between a company and a cause. They include:

Point-of-sale. When a cashier either solicits a shopper for a donation (active cause marketing) or signage is prominently displayed at the register to encourage the shopper to make a gift (passive cause marketing) that’s point-of-sale. Unless you’re completely new to my blog, you know that POS, in the form of pinups, is my bread-and-butter program. But if you are new here’s a primer.

Purchase or action triggered donation. When a consumer buys a product or service (like a latte at Starbucks on World Aids Day) a donation (5 cents) is made to a cause (Product Red) that’s a purchase-triggered donation (I think this is a better describer of what happens when a shopper buys a cause product than the “percentage-of-sale” tag I used last year). Sometimes instead of a purchase, a donation is made when the consumer performs some type of action. For example, Macy’s donated a dollar the Make-a-Wish Foundation for every letter to Santa dropped into their special letter boxes at Macy’s stores.

Licensing. This is when a company pays a fee to use a nonprofit’s brand on its product. Licensing may include a certification process by the nonprofit before the company is allowed to use the logo. A longstanding licensing pact is Arthritis Foundation’s Ease of Use Commendation for the Advil Caplets Easy Open Arthritis Cap. Cause marketing licensing is practiced by the only the biggest causes (e. g. Komen for the Cure, American Heart Association) and is not a tactic for your average or local cause.

Message Promotion. This is when a business puts its resources to work to promote a cause-focused message. David Hessekiel at Cause Marketing Forum has a lot of great examples in his Halo Award Archive.

Employee Engagement. This is when a company leverages its workforce for social good. I think of Home Depot’s Partnership with KaBOOM! to build 1000 Playgrounds in 1000 Days, which involved nearly 100,000 Home Depot volunteers.

Digital Programs. The web, social media and especially location-based services will dramatically impact cause marketing and change the way we execute the above tactics. To leave this out is to leave out the future of cause marketing and how cause and companies will partner in the years to come.

I still don’t think the “marketing of causes” or sponsorship are cause marketing. (Jocelyn Daw told me recently that while sponsorship is when the cause puts its resources to work for the company, cause marketing is when the company goes to work for the cause. I like that!) But there are some interesting and creative ways to integrate cause marketing with sponsorship.

Nor is cause marketing cause branding or corporate social responsibility, although it is a subset of the two.

Finally, cause marketing is not philanthropy. While it has philanthropic aspirations and goals, it’s better described as marketing, and, in some ways, a business.

Those are my thoughts on cause marketing for January 2011. What are yours?

[Update 1/21/11: In the comments be sure to check out Jocelyn Daw's comments on how to distinguish traditional marketing from cause marketing. She makes it quite clear. Also, she outlines the 4 P's of cause marketing: Partner, Purpose, Passion & Profits.]

What started with 40,000 pounds of chicken has grown into a million dollar cause marketing program.

Since 2004 when Ocean State Job Lot began selling their signature red gift box in their 100 stores to support cancer care services at the hospital, Job Lot has hosted multiple pinup programs that will surpass $1 million shortly after they start their winter program this weekend.

(It’s not s a surprise considering how well their business is doing, even during a recession!)

Last year’s winter program, which ran for four weeks, raised $212,000. For the past two years, OSJL has done a second program in the spring in support the food pantry at the hospital.

Cause marketing is just one way the owner of this New England discount retailer, Marc Perlman, helps us. In addition to being a major individual donor to the hospital, his company gives us  clothes, coats and food for our patients.

Just this week, Marc sent a tractor trailer full of cranberry sauce, potatoes and other products for clients of our food pantry whose Thanksgiving wouldn’t be complete without his support.

I often hold Job Lot up as an example of a great cause marketing partner. They added cause marketing to their stores to further support our cause and to engage and educate their customers in the effort. I’m sure they enjoy some benefits from all the cause marketing do, but they’ve never expressed any interest in what it does for them. (Believe me, I’ve tried!)

They’re also not a retailer that bases its giving solely on OPM (Other People’s Money). As I mentioned above, they help us in a lot of other ways.

That’s why when people start complaining about the selfishness of cause marketing partners I get confused because I’m lucky to have a few great partners that show me everyday the reasons why cause marketing is a good thing.

Right now, I can actually think of a million of them.

We’ve always included coupons on our cause marketing pinups. They have an immediate value at the register when cashiers are asking shoppers to support our cause.

“Would you like to donate a dollar to help sick kids? As a thank you, you get these coupons that have $125 in savings.”

It’s a great one-two punch! But here are four more reasons your cause marketing should have coupons.

Coupons open the door to cross-promotional partners. We learned early on that some retailers would partner with us they could cross-promote with another business. This was the case with Valvoline Instant Oil Change, which wanted to target the minivan-driving moms that shopped at iParty. Now when we recruit a partner we partly base our prospect outreach on what businesses would value cross-promotion in their stores.

Coupons are hot! According to a Ad Age, last year redemption of coupons that go through clearinghouses surged 23% to 3.2 billion coupons (and up 30% to $3.5 billion in value) in the U.S., the first gain in 17 consecutive years. Through the first nine months of 2010, coupon redemption is up another 5.3% to 2.5 billion vs. the year-ago period, with the value of coupons redeemed up 7.7% to $2.8 billion. Consumers are looking for more coupons, which is great for cause marketers like me that rely on point-of-sale programs like pinups where coupons can be added. The surprising news is that consumers of all ages aren’t getting their coupons from the internet, they’re getting them the old-fashioned way: they’re clipping them.

Coupons are overwhelmingly clipped, not downloaded. 2.1 billion coupon redemptions last year came from print inserts. Internet coupons account for just 1% of distributions. So if you think adding coupons to your pinups seems a bit old school, think again. A soon to be released report shows that 91% of consumers ages 25 to 34 use newspaper coupons. Consumers are eager to use coupons and they’re getting them almost exclusively offline. And what better place to get your coupons than after donating to a good cause at a favorite store.

Coupons prove that cause marketing works. Coupon redemption during or after a campaign is an excellent way to show partners that cause marketing works and is driving traffic. After successfully helping your cause, this is just the result a business wants. One partner of ours was thrilled when a pinup program brought in 1,100 coupon-bearing customers from cross-partner stores that generated an additional $400,000 in revenue.

Coupons give your cause marketing program a one-two punch, open the door to additional partners and provides the paper trail that cause marketing works. You also have the wind at your back. Coupons are in high demand and consumers get them offline so why not through a pinup.

Why wouldn’t you want to include coupons in your next cause marketing program?

It’s nice when you can end the week knowing you helped someone. Sharna Fulton helped me. I helped Sharna Fulton. Together we helped someone else.

Sharna helped me many years ago when she was in the sports pottery business in Atlanta and I needed a quick turnaround on a gift for my wife.

She kindly saved a husband’s life so he could be late with a gift another holiday.

I don’t remember how but we got to talking about cause marketing (maybe because I talk about it with everyone I meet even if they don’t want to), but through the years she read my blog and we talked about various programs. We even got to meet one year when she and her husband visited Boston, joining the hosptial’s Boston Marathon team at its pre-race pasta party.

We kept in touch, and continued to talk about trends in cause marketing.

Yesterday she tweeted:

Cause mktg, pin-ups, art education come together to help seniors thx to influence of @JoeWaters

The blog post she shared with me is great. You can read it for yourself, but here’s the cause marketing piece.

Students at JC Magill have signed on to our  “Create-A-Sweater” pin-up program. They’ll color, design, exhibit and sell these pin-ups at school for 1.00 each. Alternative Home Care for Seniors will, in turn, match every donation from Magill dollar for dollar up to $1,000.00. All the funds and sweaters raised will go to Gwinnett County Senior Services, the agency that helps seniors in need so they can continue to live independently at home.

What a great program! I’m embarrassed I never thought of having kids make cause marketing pinups. (Although earlier this year I did write about A. C. Moore’s pinups for Easter Seals that involved an in-store crafting event.)

Sharna is a smart, creative, giving cause marketer. As a bonus, she and her husband are also Red Sox fans.

Much of what Sharna learned on pinups and transactional cause marketing is included in the Six Figure Cause Marketing webinar. I hope you’ll join us for the next session in January.

I’m glad John Haydon introduced me to Danny Brown, because he’s given me a great idea on how to extend my retail point-of-sale programs to Facebook where I can get “likes” for my nonprofit and my retail partners.

Danny’s starting point is getting offline retail coupons online to Facebook.

Grab the artwork from your existing flyer (or make one unique to Facebook) and then transfer that to a tab on your page’s navigation menu. Currently this is created using the FBML application (and some HTML coding), though soon you’ll have to change to iFrame.

Call your tab something simple like Coupons or Discounts to grab attention. Then, to encourage folks to Like your page, only make the coupon or discount available to people after they like you. If you’re unsure how to do this, my friend John Haydon has a great guide on using Facebook HTML as well as hiding offers until people click your Like button.

This got me thinking on the coupons we use in most of our pinup programs and how they may have value beyond a simple redemption. For example:

• Instead of a coupon like the ones you see here, partners could encourage consumers to visit their Facebook page for the coupon in exchange for a “like.” Unlike an offline coupon or a web page, the retailer gains a new subscriber to their page. Yes, they have to work to keep that new fan, but the connection is a valuable one.
• If a retailer was feeling generous they could encourage shoppers to visit the cause’s page to get the discount and the nonprofit would get the like. The cause could have a coupon tab with all the discounts from their partners–deals you could only get after you like the page!
• Getting people from an offline coupon to a Facebook page needn’t be difficult. A QR code takes them there instantly and delivers the coupon! The QR code in my next pinup program would do the trick.

John Haydon told me that he plans to post on Danny’s post as well. I’ll be sure to update this page with a link if he does. John will certainly have some great info on how nonprofits can create and leverage a Facebook discount tab.

The numbers are in from our new “Meal Deals” cause marketing program with iParty, Ocean State Job Lots & Phantom Gourmet and it was a big success.

The program raised $87,000.

Proceeds will benefit my hospital’s Food Pantry, which last year fed 75,000 people.

You can read all about the details behind the “Meal Deals” program here.

We’re excited this program had a great finish, and we’re already planning our fall pinup program.

Check out the preliminary design, which includes a QR Code. When shoppers pass their smartphone over the code it will link them to our new Halloween web site. This will give shoppers easy and instant access to online content about the event and our cause.

Would you like to learn how to raise an additional $50,000, $70,000 or more for your nonprofit through cause marketing? The Six Figure Cause Marketing Program returns September 14th.

This three-hour course is a tell-all program on the best practices for ordinary nonprofits to raise real money from cause marketing. Hope to see you there.