Is 'Hovering' the Future of Online Cause Marketing?
Swoop is a new online content service that expands the potential for web pages to deliver deeper engagement with users. When you hover over keywords or icons additional content is revealed without ever leaving the page.
Right now the service is just being used with food and recipes, but cause marketing could be next.
Say the online grocer Peapod in New York uses Swoop and when visitors scroll over certain products a window opens with information on The Food Bank for New York City and how a portion of sales from that product will feed the hungry.
Another example is when you view Starbucks coffee products online Swoop shares additional info on the coffee makers fair trade practices or its support for Product RED.
What's cool is consumers don't have to leave the page their viewing to get more information. It all happens on the page they're on.
And what they see isn't a generic pop-up. The information is personalized by Swoop based on the viewer's location and search history. So instead of just getting generic information on a cause, the user could get customized information on local causes and programs that will benefit from their support.
The viewer can also share the page on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. This could be easily turned into an action-triggered donation program that has businesses rewarding causes when products and services are shared on social networks. It's a good idea that that was originally part of Endorse for a Cause but never took off.
The good news for companies is that Swoop is free for now and seems easy to install with a simple Javascript.
Swoop is not the first and won't be the last visitor to this space. A Techcrunch post on Swoop points to Apture, which was recently acquired by Google.
The point for nonprofits is that online cause marketing with services such as Swoop represent a new opportunity for engagement and revenue. Nonprofits can prepare for hovering pages now by developing an online content strategy for cause marketing partnerships that will be ready to go when hovering becomes a habit.
