The Challenge
The Points of Light Foundation had just launched an early beta version of 1-800-Volunteer.org, but needed someone to sell and promote the online volunteer management service to their members and also promote the service to all potential US volunteers to ensure that the volunteer pipeline was meeting demand.
Katherine was the first hire on the 1-800-Volunteer.org team with 100 existing customers who had signed up for a free trial but the beta users had been waiting for access for a year, and the system was built without clear business requirements or training documentation.
The Solutions
Katherine developed the go-to-market strategy for 1-800-Volunteer.org and HelpinDisaster.org
She made the business case to build out a landing page for just the disaster functionality in the management system and HelpinDisaster.org and statewide portals and functionality for 1-800-Volunteer.org were launched.
For both she:
- Created comprehensive marketing and sales plan
- Customer training and implementation procedures
- Customer online marketing training
- Was involved in the national brand partnerships and press strategy
- Set the SEO and analytics strategy and implemented both.
Katherine wrote the first training manual, assisted in the setup of Salesforce to manage our sales and implementation process, and was involved in product development and the Q/A process.
Katherine created all marketing and sales collateral and strategy and managed the execution of that strategy (without staff or consultants) which included:
- Event strategy and participation
- Cold calling leads and establishing the entire sales process and pipeline. She was the point person for qualifying sales leads, giving sales presentations and closing sales.
- Creating an email marketing campaign (and selecting an email marketing vendor)
- Managing PR efforts
- Managing SEO efforts (which included training all of our clients on SEO copywriting and online promotion)
- Selecting and installing web analytics software for client and national reporting.
The Results
Katherine took 1-800-Volunteer.org from a new-to-market product to the market leader in under 3 years due to her marketing and sales efforts, and she turned those 100 unhappy beta customers into brand advocates.
She also tripled the amount of visitors on the website.
Katherine’s influence in securing the usage of 1-800-Volunteer.org software by Volunteer Centers and the governor’s offices of MS, LA, and AL to assist in the Hurricane Katrina recovery played an important role in the site’s success.
It also led to the development of HelpinDisaster.org, a site to coordinate volunteer emergency aid at a national level. HelpinDisaster.org, a sister site of 1-800-Volunteer.org, was used as the national disaster volunteer management system during Hurricane Dean thanks to partnerships Katherine was a part of securing with Disney, the American Red Cross, and FEMA.
We can help you with your social media strategy as well – whether promotional or focused on customer service.
