The Ease of Donating Online – Working with UNICEF

Marketing and E-commerce companies are always interested in buyer behaviour.  There are a few interesting commonalities between marketing a charity organization and an E-commerce company. In both marketing the services of E-commerce companies and charitable projects you find parallels in the customer’s/donor’s thought process – moving them through the different buying phases: Need Recognition, Information Search, Evaluation, Purchase Decision and Post-purchase Behaviour.

There a few behavioural marketing principles that can help guide people through those phases, ultimately leading them to “convert”. Several principles can be applied to both charities and E-commerce sales:

1. Clearly identify your target audience. Find out what matters the most to your audience and showcase specific benefits that will resonate with them.

2. Make the anchor clear to the buyer. People base decisions on clear information they receive and the impact their purchase will have.

3. Social proof the project. Buyers adopt to beliefs or actions of a group they like or trust. Social sharing that display other followers and shares encourages action.

4. Personalise the message. People buy from people, so it’s always a good idea to have close connection with the charity or company you working with.

5. Make it easy to participate. People are already busy with a myriad of daily activities and any call to action that requires a complicated process with lots of work will have a negative impact on the project.

Unlike companies, charitable organisations do not have access to large sales teams that can highlight the benefits of a donation. They have to rely on other means to show the value of donations in fulfilling their duties. But with more online E-commerce and Social media platforms making it easier to donate online and through mobile devices, it is now easier for charities – whether it is UNICEF or the local community centre – to reach a larger audience and demonstrate the value of a donation.

UNICEF approached Rakuten Malaysia earlier this year to discuss the possibly of collaboration to reach more donors in Malaysia. UNICEF, the United Nations program that provides long-term humanitarian and developmental assistance to children and mothers in developing countries, already had a programme in place called the Inspired Gifts programme. By purchasing a UNICEF Inspired Gift, we can help UNICEF achieve that goal.

Rakuten shares UNICEF’s commitment in improving the lives and well-being of children around the world, but while we love the vision working with UNICEF to reach more donors we needed information from our customers to find out whether they’d be willing to take part in such a program.

To provide answers a survey was conducted to evaluate factors such as willingness to donate, motivation and ease of donating previously. The survey conducted by Rakuten Malaysia found that an overwhelming 79% of Malaysians would donate Christmas gifts for underprivileged communities and 38% cite “ease and convenience” – such as buying it online – as a key motivating factor.

Armed with this knowledge the UNICEF Inspired Gift Programme was launched on our platform. 3 gifts were selected that we felt would resonate with our customers the most: an immunisation kit, a “School-in-a-Box” gift-pack and an “Early Childhood Development Kit”. Donors can now purchase one of these Inspired gifts through Rakuten online and mobile websites and the purchased item will be shipped directly to children in need in over 190 countries where UNICEF serves.

While partnering with UNICEF is ultimately helping children in desperate need, we also opened a new avenue for this reputable UN organisation to reach a larger donor audience through an easy online donation function.

Visit the special Rakuten Malaysia UNICEF Project website for more information about the UNICEF Inspired Gift programme.