This piece is brought to you by Julia Hartwig, Director of Demand Generation at PubNub. PubNub is a real-time communication platform designed to solve the key challenges of building and scaling apps.

At the beginning of this pandemic, we decided as a company to shift our approach away from selling, and to look instead towards giving. We realized that our customers and community at large were going through the same daily struggles as us, and we wanted to be a resource for them in times of need. So, we allocated our entire ABM budget for donations to local and global charities.

Driving Registrations and Responses with Charity eGifts 

Our team’s marketing approach shifted over the last two months from an event-heavy focus for the quarter to more strategic, account-targeted efforts paired with live webinars. For this, we are currently leveraging Sendoso’s “Charity Choice” eGift option for our sales and marketing teams to utilize.

Our webinar registrants are given the option of donating to their charity of choice upon registration. Since implementing Sendoso, webinar registrations have increased by 32%. 

And, we have expanded our SDR’s outreach efforts from “coffee on us” to “donations in your name.” Response rates to key demographics have improved by 14%. 

The ability to quickly set up touches in Sendoso has proved invaluable. To date, we have submitted over 120 donations on behalf of our customers, and that number continues to rise daily. 

Additionally, Sendoso’s platform has provided us with the ease of giving customers Amazon gift cards to purchase groceries from Whole Foods or Amazon Fresh, which can be vital during shelter-in-place, and UberEats credits to support local restaurants during the citywide shutdown. 

These efforts have aided our demand generation efforts, and have allowed us to drive some of our marketing dollars to help those in need directly. And, they have helped me reflect on the role marketers can play during a global crisis.

Giving Back and Gaining Trust 

For myself and those around me, the coronavirus crisis is emotionally daunting. Between raising my one-year-old baby girl, and maintaining my professional responsibilities amidst the volatile market, keeping everything running smoothly can quickly become overwhelming. And, I know I’m not alone in this. So, I wonder to myself, “When will this end?” “What can I do right now?” and “How can PubNub help?”

I run the Demand Generation, Marketing and Sales Team at PubNub, and am deeply fortunate to work for a tech company that is helping power virtual medicine, e-learning, virtual events (including live church events), and food delivery applications, which each provide solutions to elements of the current crisis in their own way. But, I still feel like we should and can do more. 

Especially because many people don’t trust marketers. In fact, research shows that the public is three times more likely to trust a car mechanic than a marketer—and it’s easy to understand why. With the advent of big data, people are increasingly wary of the information they give to tech companies by engaging with our marketing initiatives. Yet, marketing is strategically vital and often commands large budgets. The money doesn’t always have to end up getting poured into the pockets of ad platforms.

Solutions like Sendoso allow us to easily divert some of those funds and enable our prospects to support charities and local businesses. By creatively using our budgets as a force for good, we can help change the perspective and use marketing to make the world a better place. 

We are hoping PubNub’s generosity will permeate the local and global communities, and initiate a trend of fellow tech companies doing the same. 

Huge shoutout to Sendoso for helping us launch this project! 

To find out more about Sendoso’s charitable eGift options and other features, request a demo below.