ABOUT
Understanding how our “Helping Out Locally” Community Engagement System works
Quick Synopsis:
The Community Engagement system starts out as a simple contest, where charities or organizations compete by getting the most votes in a two-month period. The votes are done on your website, where the voters can see who’s winning, and can easily email or post to their friends on social media to get them to vote for their organization on your website as well. We suggest that you only plan on running contests four times per year. This allows you to take a month off after each contest to celebrate the winners and set-up your next competition.
Contractor’s time requirements:
The part of this program that every contractor will appreciate is that the only part you really have to do is
Contest rules:
Typically, we have run the contests on a budget of $1,750 per quarter. This allows the sponsoring company to offer $1,000 to the organization or charity who comes in first, $500 for Second Place, and $250 for Third Place. This way, every organization wins something for participating. We learned this was better than just having only one prize from one of our initial tests. In this test, within the first two weeks, one of the charities hit their supporters hard and had three times the votes as the other two charities combined. Since, at the time, there was only a first-place prize, this discouraged the other two groups to give up and stop competing. Besides, it just makes sense that if they are telling their base about your company you want each organization to get something for their efforts.
Choosing your charities and organizations:
The best charities and organizations to work with are ones that both operate and are funded locally. The more local, the better. Before approaching a local organization, check to see if they have things like an active Facebook presence, a newsletter and website. Remember, the program is fueled by the charities being able to engage and motivate their supporters. The best results have been with charities that utilize these communication channels well. You will be the most successful where the organizations take it personally and want to beat out the others for bragging rights. So, always try to make it a tight competition by working with charities that have similar reach in your community.
As a final thought, if you choose a group that works with pets and animals, try to put them against a real strong competitor. The network, reach, and ability to motivate that these animal care groups have shown has amazed us. We saw an animal shelter beat a teen pregnancy center by over 1,100 votes in one community. Go figure.
Going live:
Once the contest has gone live, if you did your due diligence and chose the right charities, they will be out motivating their base to go to your website to vote. Because repetition is great for remembering things (like your company’s name), the more times they vote, the better. In fact, our system will automatically keep them focused on the contest by sending them a weekly update as to who has voted for them and where they stand in the competition.
The voting process:
When someone from your community goes to your site to vote, they are brought to a screen where all three organizations are shown. You can have a small write up about each one, or we can even put up a small 1-minute video the organization can capture with their cell phone that briefly covers what their organization is about. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, however, one of the big selling points you can use to get organizations involved is the exposure they get to the donors and supporters of the competing organizations. People who give are the people they want to be exposed to, so it’s smart for them to take a minute to ‘sell’ their mission.
Once on the page, visitors can cast a vote for the group they want to win. First-time voters (subsequent voting does not require this), will see a screen letting them know that the email address or text number they used to sign in to vote needs to be verified. At this point, they are assured that the information they give will not be sold or used for any purpose that does not involve helping the organization for which they are voting. We do this because it puts the customer at ease, while still allowing you to make offers to them in the future so long as the organization they are passionate about also benefits should they act on the offer. This is called Affinity Marketing. By identifying what they want to support, you have been handed an additional ‘lever’ to motivate future buying choices. How hard is it to offer a coupon for a specially-priced fall tune-up, where the organization they like to support gets $10 or so for every coupon that gets used? Everybody wins.
To verify, if they signed in to vote with an email address, they will be instructed to click the link on the email that was sent to them. If they signed in with their cell number, a text will be sent to which they must respond to continue. Once they verify with either email or text, the link they clicked will take them to the result screen where they can see how the vote stands and if their organization is winning or losing and by how much.
At this point, the voter is encouraged to help promote more votes for their charity by sharing a link configured to their choice of charity on their Facebook page. The automatically-created post explains the contest and encourages their friends to go to your site and vote for the same charity. Besides the Facebook option, the visitor can also click a link to send an email to a friend that contains text and a pre-configured link that does these same things.
If it is the first time they have voted, a thank you letter is also created on the results page which can be set up from the business owner or from the director of the organization. Setting it up as a ‘thank you’ from the organization is more powerful because it acts as a tacit endorsement of your company by the organization the customer supports. If you get permission to do this, it works best if you include a smiling picture of the organization’s director/spokesperson along with the letter. This ‘thank you’ letter is also where the consumer is offered a discount coupon to use your services that also rewards the charity they voted for monetarily for every coupon that get turned in. For example, the coupon could be for $20 off any service with an additional $10 going to their organization when it is used. Here’s a sample of how this letter can read:
The ‘Coupon Bank’
One of the best things we learned in the testing was that, although offering voters a coupon at the time they voted sounded good, it didn’t get the response we had hoped for. When we analyzed it, we realized that offering them a coupon meant that we had to depend on them to print or save it somehow in order to use it. This tied our hands from reminding them about using it in the future at times when they are focused on their plumbing or HVAC system. Because of this, we built a feature in our system that allows the consumer to retrieve any charity coupons received through participation, simply by going to your company’s website and entering the email address or cell number that was verified when voting.
For example, an HVAC company can suggest the consumer use the coupon toward a tune-up in the Fall and Spring when they’re thinking about their system. A plumbing company might remind their charity supporters about it after hard rains when customers are praying their old sump pumps won’t fail. With the coupon bank, you keep the ball in your court with the ability to remind them over the next year that they can use it to help the charity about which they are passionate.
Optional things you can do to increase your benefits:
Don’t hesitate to get your customers involved whenever you run a contest. Have a sheet explaining your contest to help local charities that your techs can give your customers whenever they are on a call. Not only does it let your customers know that the company they called invests in their community, but there’s a greater chance of them posting on Facebook about the contest you are doing for charity and who they voted for, than there is of them posting that you fixed their water heater.
The best way to see how this works is to click below and try it.
The Community Engagement system starts out as a simple contest, where charities or organizations compete by getting the most votes in a two-month period. The votes are done on your website, where the voters can see who’s winning, and can easily email or post to their friends on social media to get them to vote for their organization on your website as well. We suggest that you only plan on running contests four times per year. This allows you to take a month off after each contest to celebrate the winners and set-up your next competition.
Contractor’s time requirements:
The part of this program that every contractor will appreciate is that the only part you really have to do is
- Decide what you want to donate,
- Reach out to the local charities that you want to help, and
- Once a contest is over, get your picture taken celebrating the winners while presenting the ‘big’ check with the donation amount their supporters won.
Contest rules:
- When voting for the organization a person supports, each person can vote as many times as they want, but no more than once per day (1 vote/day/person). Voters not following this provision will be flagged and not counted.
- Votes with unverified email addresses or cell phone numbers will not be counted. A voter’s email address or cell phone number will not be sold or used by the sponsoring company for anything outside this contest unless it is a way to help the organization for which the person voted.
- Once a voter’s email address or cell number has been verified for a contest, they will not need to verify it again to vote in that contest, however, they will not be able to change who they first voted for in the contest (at the time their phone or email was verified).
Typically, we have run the contests on a budget of $1,750 per quarter. This allows the sponsoring company to offer $1,000 to the organization or charity who comes in first, $500 for Second Place, and $250 for Third Place. This way, every organization wins something for participating. We learned this was better than just having only one prize from one of our initial tests. In this test, within the first two weeks, one of the charities hit their supporters hard and had three times the votes as the other two charities combined. Since, at the time, there was only a first-place prize, this discouraged the other two groups to give up and stop competing. Besides, it just makes sense that if they are telling their base about your company you want each organization to get something for their efforts.
Choosing your charities and organizations:
The best charities and organizations to work with are ones that both operate and are funded locally. The more local, the better. Before approaching a local organization, check to see if they have things like an active Facebook presence, a newsletter and website. Remember, the program is fueled by the charities being able to engage and motivate their supporters. The best results have been with charities that utilize these communication channels well. You will be the most successful where the organizations take it personally and want to beat out the others for bragging rights. So, always try to make it a tight competition by working with charities that have similar reach in your community.
As a final thought, if you choose a group that works with pets and animals, try to put them against a real strong competitor. The network, reach, and ability to motivate that these animal care groups have shown has amazed us. We saw an animal shelter beat a teen pregnancy center by over 1,100 votes in one community. Go figure.
Going live:
Once the contest has gone live, if you did your due diligence and chose the right charities, they will be out motivating their base to go to your website to vote. Because repetition is great for remembering things (like your company’s name), the more times they vote, the better. In fact, our system will automatically keep them focused on the contest by sending them a weekly update as to who has voted for them and where they stand in the competition.
The voting process:
When someone from your community goes to your site to vote, they are brought to a screen where all three organizations are shown. You can have a small write up about each one, or we can even put up a small 1-minute video the organization can capture with their cell phone that briefly covers what their organization is about. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, however, one of the big selling points you can use to get organizations involved is the exposure they get to the donors and supporters of the competing organizations. People who give are the people they want to be exposed to, so it’s smart for them to take a minute to ‘sell’ their mission.
Once on the page, visitors can cast a vote for the group they want to win. First-time voters (subsequent voting does not require this), will see a screen letting them know that the email address or text number they used to sign in to vote needs to be verified. At this point, they are assured that the information they give will not be sold or used for any purpose that does not involve helping the organization for which they are voting. We do this because it puts the customer at ease, while still allowing you to make offers to them in the future so long as the organization they are passionate about also benefits should they act on the offer. This is called Affinity Marketing. By identifying what they want to support, you have been handed an additional ‘lever’ to motivate future buying choices. How hard is it to offer a coupon for a specially-priced fall tune-up, where the organization they like to support gets $10 or so for every coupon that gets used? Everybody wins.
To verify, if they signed in to vote with an email address, they will be instructed to click the link on the email that was sent to them. If they signed in with their cell number, a text will be sent to which they must respond to continue. Once they verify with either email or text, the link they clicked will take them to the result screen where they can see how the vote stands and if their organization is winning or losing and by how much.
At this point, the voter is encouraged to help promote more votes for their charity by sharing a link configured to their choice of charity on their Facebook page. The automatically-created post explains the contest and encourages their friends to go to your site and vote for the same charity. Besides the Facebook option, the visitor can also click a link to send an email to a friend that contains text and a pre-configured link that does these same things.
If it is the first time they have voted, a thank you letter is also created on the results page which can be set up from the business owner or from the director of the organization. Setting it up as a ‘thank you’ from the organization is more powerful because it acts as a tacit endorsement of your company by the organization the customer supports. If you get permission to do this, it works best if you include a smiling picture of the organization’s director/spokesperson along with the letter. This ‘thank you’ letter is also where the consumer is offered a discount coupon to use your services that also rewards the charity they voted for monetarily for every coupon that get turned in. For example, the coupon could be for $20 off any service with an additional $10 going to their organization when it is used. Here’s a sample of how this letter can read:
One of the best things we learned in the testing was that, although offering voters a coupon at the time they voted sounded good, it didn’t get the response we had hoped for. When we analyzed it, we realized that offering them a coupon meant that we had to depend on them to print or save it somehow in order to use it. This tied our hands from reminding them about using it in the future at times when they are focused on their plumbing or HVAC system. Because of this, we built a feature in our system that allows the consumer to retrieve any charity coupons received through participation, simply by going to your company’s website and entering the email address or cell number that was verified when voting.
For example, an HVAC company can suggest the consumer use the coupon toward a tune-up in the Fall and Spring when they’re thinking about their system. A plumbing company might remind their charity supporters about it after hard rains when customers are praying their old sump pumps won’t fail. With the coupon bank, you keep the ball in your court with the ability to remind them over the next year that they can use it to help the charity about which they are passionate.
Optional things you can do to increase your benefits:
Don’t hesitate to get your customers involved whenever you run a contest. Have a sheet explaining your contest to help local charities that your techs can give your customers whenever they are on a call. Not only does it let your customers know that the company they called invests in their community, but there’s a greater chance of them posting on Facebook about the contest you are doing for charity and who they voted for, than there is of them posting that you fixed their water heater.
The best way to see how this works is to click below and try it.