If you're paying any attention to media or your friends at all these days, then you've heard about the American Red Cross' text message campaign to raise funds for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. It's simple. Text 'HAITI' to 90999 from your cell phone to donate $10 and help the people in Haiti. So far over $12 million have been raised by this text messaging campaign alone out of about $87 million in total donations to the American Red Cross. If you think about it, that means that almost 14% of all donations have been made via people's cell phones.
If you're a business owner, then you now that it's very unlikely that 14% of your sales come from people's cell phones. And while it would be unrealistic for me to assume that a similar percentage of sales will come from mobile phones in all categories, I do think that the behavior of paying via cell phone is going to in popularity rather quickly. Not in small part thanks to this very successful campaign by the American Red Cross, which is making people comfortable with the notion of being charged via their cell phone bills.
UPDATE: Apparently over $21 million have now been donated via text message.
Here are the reasons why this text messaging campaign has been so wildly successful:
Help is more needed than ever
The people of Haiti need our help more than ever. They lived in dire conditions before this earthquake, and now things got even worse. The pictures you see on TV and in the media more than ever show the widening gap between rich and poor in this world. As human beings, we need to help now and we then we need to continue to help - even once the media is going to stop running this story.
It is easy
Donating money is not top of mind for everyone. It's something that oftentimes gets pushed to the bottom of that to do list. Through this dead-simple texting campaign, it was easier than ever to donate money. As a matter of fact, it was hard to not donate. And that's the way it should be. If it's easy to get fat (thank you fast food) and be lazy (thank you television), then it's only fair that it's to help others.
It fits new consumer behaviors
For people like me, using the postal service is a very unnatural behavior. If something involves an envelope and a stamp, it will take me a long time to complete. On the other hand, my iPhone is always on me and this donation campaign finally fit the bill for consumers who behave more like me and less than my grandfather.
Social media made it spread like wild fire
Everybody was blogging and tweeting about this campaign. It was a fairly new concept, interesting, and most importantly fit into 140 characters or less. Tweeting "please send your donations to po box 198181, los angeles ca 90064" wouldn't have near the same impact.
It was backed by the US State Department
The American Red Cross and this campaign is backed by the United States government, which brought a lot of credibility to this effort. It's not like you were donating to Jimmy's Help Haiti fund.
It is not clear how quickly paying via your cell phone is going to be adopted, but it's coming and I think this will be the campaign that brought pay-by-text into the mainstream.
If you haven't already, text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to support the efforts of the American Red Cross in Haiti. Every dollar is needed.
Disclaimer: I run Causecast Mobile
Okay... now that part is out of the way...
One thing I'd most certainly add is that, well, it was front and center on every major site and station. That most certainly helps.
Also, the immediate action taken by Yele and Red Cross. They were primed and ready to jump in front of everyone.
The real trick is to help organizations utilize mobile in a non-emergency fashion, and to help them integrate it into their existing marketing strategy.
James, you are right that this stuff was front and center almost immediately. It didn't start with a "send us your check to this address" effort.
Since you are the expert matter, I have a question.
How long does it take from a purely logistical matter (technology only) to setup a text campaign like this?