Pranav Juturi

Mcmennamy
Academy Capstone
21 October 2016
Real Life Examples
Inbound marketing is the promotion of a certain product or
service through channels quite different from traditional marketing.
Rather than hopelessly fighting for their attention, inbound marketing
involves bringing the customers attention to you. For the last decade,
it has been a method frequently used by many businesses around the
world to market their products or services. What isnt being done too
often however is using inbound marketing to try and promote a
message for a certain cause. In other words, inbound marketing has a
lot of unused potential for nonprofit organizations. There are however a
few instances in the real world of nonprofit organizations employing
these topics. From these organizations, one can learn the impacts of in
inbound marketing channels such as mobile phones, social media
outlets, and email campaigns.
Through the Red Cross Hurricane app, one can learn about the
success of inbound marketing through mobile apps. A few years ago,
after Hurricane Sandy hit, American Red Cross launched an app, called

the Red Cross Hurricane app, to increase awareness regarding the

catastrophe and to try to relieve some of the damage caused, through
donations. The most interesting thing about this app is that it provided
a means of communication from the organization to the users
regarding the status of the affected area. People knew instantly and
specifically how bad Hurricane Sandy was. For example, it provided
real-time information to track the amount of damage created and the
status of the storm, specifically through crisis mapping. According to
Lea Shanley, a scientist in the Commons Lab of Wisconsin, Crisis
mapping is an inter-disciplinary field that aggregates crowd-generated
input data, such as social media feeds and photographs, with
geographic data, to provide real-time, interactive information in
support of disaster management and humanitarian relief. The data
drawn from crisis mapping reportedly created a 900% increase in
engagement with preparedness information, according to their
website. This specific information opened peoples eyes to exactly how
bad Hurricane Sandy was. Knowing this, people felt more inclined to
help towards the cause of alleviating. This is the perfect example of
how inbound marketing tactics can assist numerous nonprofit
organizations. Communication is one of the big pillars of inbound
marketing and the American Red Cross fully accomplished this very

thing through the inbound channel of mobile phones. The American

Red Cross not only demonstrated the importance of communication,
but also the way in which present day technologies can be used.
Another instance which teaches the impact of inbound marketing,
this time through social media outlets, is when the Department of
Health posted videos on social media to teach children about awkward
health issues as part of their Awkward Conversations project. Social
media is the perfect way to market something these days, as it is
extremely easy cheap and can reach out to everyone everywhere. It is
so feasible for the marketers in fact, that sometimes their business
gets promoted through no effort of their own. In this day and age,
according to Dave Evans, Consumers are actively connecting with
each other and sharing information about everything. In the process,
they are reinforcing marketing efforts [for businesses]. This helps
increase the amount of inbound traffic and inbound attention an
organization receives. Although all the benefits of social media are
quite clear, in the Industrial Marketing Management Journal, author
Nina Michaelidou said that Only over a quarter of nonprofits in the UK
are currently using social networking sites to achieve brand objectives,
the most popular of which is to attract new customers. This highlights
how overlooked social media marketing is, regardless of its

effectiveness. The Department of Health however, did not overlook

anything. They took full advantage of social media to communicate
their message regarding the health of adolescents. Their videos quickly
grew to be widely popular, with each video getting over 140,000 likes.
This is the perfect example to prove the efficiency of inbound
marketing. With almost no money taken out of their marketing budget,
the Department of Health managed to get their message across the
country easily.
A project called charity: water, carried out by Responsys, was an
email campaign to help provide water to countries in Africa. According
to Ketan Banjaras patent on how to identify and construct the proper
email campaign, In order to be able to provide the most internet
efficient advertising, companies need to be able to assess the
effectiveness of any internet-based advertising campaign. This
includes email campaigns. Email campaigns are less common in the
world of inbound marketing but still vital. They are an effective means
of communicating with leads and potential customers. As long as the
information sent in the email is relevant and valuable, it has the
potential to be a two-way communication corridor, which is exactly
what organizations want. This one by Responsys in 2012 showed the
value of personalization in email marketing. They used several mass

email blasts to regular people, educating and engaging subscribers.

People could react to the campaign by either responding back and
inquiring more about the project, or clicking on call-to-actions to
donate towards the cause. In just about a month, they raised over $2
million. This once again exemplifies the potential that inbound
marketing and interactive marketing channels have in the nonprofit
sector.
One can look at the real world to see how nonprofit marketing
can make an impact.

Works Cited
Banjara, Ketan. System and Method for Identifying Email Campaigns.
Iconix, Inc, assignee. Patent US20090077182. 17 Sept. 2007.
Web. 29 Oct. 2016

Evans, Dave. Social Media Marketing: AN=n Hour a Day. Indianapolis,

IN: Wiley, 2008. 2-7. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.
Michaelidou, Nina. Usage, Barriers, and Measurement of Social Media
Marketing. Industrial Marketing Management 40.7 (2011): 11531159. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.
Shanley, Lea. Tweeting Up a Storm: The Promise and Perils of Crisis
Mapping. Photogrammetric Engineering & Rumors Sensing
(2013): 32-35. Web. 2 Nov. 2016.