Network marketing

Despite our best marketing and PR efforts, the majority of Net4kids donors find us via their own networks. That’s why the Personal Touch campaign was launched in 2005. Essentially, we asked people who believe in what Net4kids stands for, to activate their networks with tailored messages (large business, small business, project-specific, general support message). With the success of 2005 in mind (the campaign generated 10% more donors), we include the basic texts for Personal Touch with every package sent to new volunteers. The results of the ‘sleeper campaign’ were difficult to measure, but seemed to trail behind those of the large-scale efforts of 2005. A continuation of the 2005 campaign, combined with a ‘Christmas module’ (send your cards here/tell your friends and customers) was unfortunately not realised due to a lack of html authoring strength. We hope to profit from the preparations and learning points of this year with a new campaign next year.

Another form of network marketing we could implement thanks to our donors is the publication of business-to-business newsletters. This cuts both ways: the sponsor is given the opportunity to explain their reasons for choosing Net4kids, and Net4kids gets front-row access to new potential donors. We emphasised this possibility in our proposition for businesses in 2006. This lead to Net4kids being visible (at least) 6 times ‘under donor branding’. We cannot report on concrete results, because there is no monitoring of newsletter distribution and impact at the donor end.