Every year, Red Sage gives a donation to a local nonprofit organization in the name of its customers in lieu of sending corporate Christmas gifts. For 2010, we wanted to get our customers involved in the decision process and give them the opportunity to choose the nonprofit that would receive the $500 donation. We created a campaign that combined direct mail, development of a microsite, and Facebook to invite our customers and friends to help us select the winning non-profit.

The campaign started with the creation of a microsite that included a page for each employee to write a personal story about their chosen nonprofit, typically one they were active with in their spare time. Then, a Facebook “like” button was integrated into each page so that site visitors would be able to vote for their favorite nonprofit. To advertise the campaign, we chose a custom-designed Christmas card that was sent to customers, vendors, and friends. The card carried the design theme from the microsite and gave instructions for how to vote.

Looking to harness the power of social media, we then created a custom tab on Facebook that contained custom html programming with graphics that matched the campaign and a link to the microsite. This tab was set to be the landing page so visitors to our Facebook page would see this tab before they saw anything else and be encouraged to take part in the selection process.

Things started going viral when our employees began using their own Facebook accounts and social networks to encourage voting. The link to the website was posted by each individual employee and their friends reposted the link. The nonprofits got into the spirit of the competition with postings of their own. Habitat for Humanity created an event page for the contest, which allowed them to send a mass invite out to all of their fans. Buzz grew as two nonprofits took over the lead in the competition and status postings on Facebook from people following the close race encouraged even more voting.

In the end, 487 people took part in the campaign. Red Sage received many positive comments from customers through its Facebook fan page, calls, and emails. As an added bonus, the company received media attention from a local newspaper and an article was run about the campaign on the front page of the business section.