Eight e-mail marketing companies last week announced they had pooled resources to drive donations to charities involved in providing relief to victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The firms sent two e-mails to 40 million addresses calling for donations to aid in disaster relief, said a joint statement.
“An aggregate 1 percent response rate and a $25 average gift can mean $10 million in less than a week,” said Rich Maradik, CEO of SmartDM Inc., an offline and online direct marketing services company that owns SmartReminders.
Links to nine charities were included in the HTML e-mails: The United Way September 11th Fund, American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, Salvation Army Disaster Relief Effort, Feed the Children, Federal Employees Education and Assistance Fund created for the Word Trade Center/Pentagon Fund, New York Firefighters Memorial Fund, New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund, Americares and Helping.org.
“As a longtime New Yorker and CEO of a New York-based company, the tragic events of Sept. 11 hit home for me personally along with all the members of our staff,” said Rosalind Resnick, president/CEO of NetCreations Inc., whose PostMasterDirect.com claims a database of 40 million e-mail addresses.
The e-mails will provide recipients a “seal of authenticity” that pledges all companies participating in this coordinated effort would never accept advertisements from disreputable organizations looking to profit from this tragedy, said the joint statement.
Participating companies were SmartReminders, NetCreations, MyPoints, 24/7 Media, ValueClick, Yesmail, Sendmoreinfo and Magellan.
