Blue Tent Marketing

Anyone questioning the effectiveness of SMS marketing need only look to the recent tragedy in Haiti.  A fellow Colorado company mGive manages the Red Cross’s mobile donation program.  Donors are able to quickly and easily make a $10 dollar donation to the Red Cross in support of their critical relief efforts in Haiti.  All it takes to help is a simple text message sent for any mobile phone.

In only a few short days this mobile marketing campaign has gone viral and generated over $8 million! To put that in perspective, that’s more than the Chinese Government’s monetary contribution to the crisis thus far. What’s more significant is that these funds were generated from a demographic that would otherwise have gone largely untapped.  Although dwarfed by the contributions coming form most governments, NGOs, and corporations, these funds have been gathered efficiently and economically from a donor base that doesn’t typically write checks or take the trouble to go online and fill out a donor form.  The power of this medium as a marketing channel is clear.

Blue Tenters are doing their part, and we’re told that the Marines will be landing shortly in Haiti to help.  Click here for a way to donate online to the Red Cross, or text “Haiti” to 90999.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 6:50 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.