What marketer doesn’t wake up every day wondering how they are going to get new eyeballs on their “product”? Whether you’re a retailer or a nonprofit, you want AND need awareness. Many would argue that is easier for those companies with media budgets, while nonprofits struggle with reaching new people with little-to-no money allocated to those efforts. As Rob has said before, you are doing a disservice to your nonprofit if you don’t prioritize marketing in some way.

But, sometimes, it’s hard just to know where to start. In this post I’m going to throw out one idea that was recently a wild success for one of our clients.

This client came to us with a fun challenge: help us launch a re-vamped campaign. But, they were looking for new ideas, not just the stuff they’ve done before. With their ultimate goal of cultivating new stakeholders that could eventually be groomed into donors, we came to the table with some interesting ideas, one of which was activating their message through the Care2 community.

Care2 is the largest community for good with more than 25 million members. They are well-known for their ability to rally people through petitions. But, the platform’s capabilities are much broader than that. Members can join nonprofits, donate money, spread news to their networks, comment on blogs, start their own groups or volunteer; it’s all about being involved. They also get members to categorize their interests so personalized content can be targeted directly to them (categories such as animal rights, environment, women’s rights, etc). Essentially they have already cultivated a potential audience for your nonprofit.

We suggested that they test out the efficacy of the Care2 community for this campaign with an introductory “Daily Alert” package. This daily email alert urges Care2 members to click through to take an action. They are quick and simple and targeted to their interests. There is a strong call-to-action to share the message with their personal networks on social media (of which an average of 10% of Care2 members actually do!) And according to research, stakeholders are almost 7 times more likely to donate to a cause after theypreviously took an action for a particular cause—which sealed the deal.

This sort of sounds like a sales pitch? That’s not our intention. (We don’t work for them.) The bottom line is that we’re interested in tactics that work for our clients. And this worked. Emails acquired through the Care2 network accounted for almost 50% of our client’s total email acquisition during the month of their campaign. By employing this tactic, they doubled what their email acquisition would’ve been without this channel.

Now this, combined with other strategies, could work for you. Contact us or check out their site.