In Cause Marketing, Portray Effectiveness

As with bricks-and-mortar stores, online customers take into account a retailer’s contributions to society when making purchase decisions. An eMarketer posting reports that for about one out of every two consumers, social purpose is a purchase trigger, and about three out of every four consumers say it’s acceptable for a business to make money by touting social consciousness.
     Still, surveys are showing an increasing demand from recipients of your cause marketing to know the results of the partnerships with nonprofit organizations. How much you’ve done and for whom is of interest, but outweighing this is attention to what difference, if any, your activities made. A Media Post article opines that this is particularly important to affluent consumers.
     Start by choosing the right nonprofit partner so that the results you report are relevant to the consumers’ personal objectives. In looking at this issue, researchers at University of Minnesota, University of South Carolina, and University of Georgia used a fundamental dimension in consumer psychology—promotion-focused versus prevention-focused.
     Prevention-focused shoppers put top priority on products and services which help them avoid losing what they have now. Promotion-focused shoppers put top priority on products and services which help them gain more than they have now.
     Shoppers in luxury stores are more likely to be promotion- than prevention-focused, while it’s the other way around for shoppers for necessities. That influences the merchandise they’ll buy in the ways you’d expect. However, when it comes to the charitable activities, they support, it’s more complicated: Shoppers interested in self-enhancement in their purchases are more comfortable when the store includes among their main partners charities supporting traditional causes, such as basics and conservation.
     If these luxury store brands do include a symphony orchestra or art exhibit among their partners, they might do well to also highlight their continuing association with a charity providing food, shelter, and education to disadvantaged populations.
     Once you have the right nonprofit partner, maintain continuity and consistency in the cause marketing. The Media Post article gives an example of a lapse of four years in the joint business-nonprofit marketing campaign. This belies claims of authentic commitment to the nonprofit.
     Then, in describing your effectiveness, use both statistics and stories, and augment both types of information with graphics. Understanding the numbers is easier when they’re organized in a table or summarized in a chart. Stories are more compelling when accompanied by a photo or drawing.

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