March of Dimes

The Solutions

In Fall 2005, the March of Dimes hired Jeffrey Bair as its new director of eBusiness alliances. Coming from Cendant Corp.,  where he had launched and managed an Affiliate Program as part of his role as director of marketing, Bair immediately recognized that the March of Dimes also needed to leverage an Affiliate Network for Internet outreach to a broad and diverse audience.

An Affiliate Network is a middleman organization that connects advertisers with website owners who are willing to publish banner advertisements on their websites for a fee. These participating websites are known as "Publishers" or, more commonly, "Affiliates."  By operating as a middleman between Advertisers and Affiliates, an Affiliate Network can help an organization to get its message advertised on hundreds or thousands of small to medium-sized websites.

Because of Bair's experience at Cendant in creating and managing an Affiliate Program, he was already familiar with the major Affiliate Networks, such as Commission Junction and LinkShare. But, the March of Dimes wasn't in a position to pay thousands of dollars in monthly management fees. Bair also felt that both of the big Affiliate Networks required excessively restrictive agreements that could limit March of Dimes' use of Affiliates outside their networks.

Instead, Bair turned to KowaBunga!, a smaller Affiliate Network and software provider that supported the March of Dimes' cause and offered a favorable deal in the form of discounted fees and pro bono services. KowaBunga!'s My Affiliate Program (MyAP) software package also includes access to its network of Affiliates, but the arrangement is flexible enough that prospective Affiliates don't necessarily need to become members of the KowaBunga! Network in order to work with the March of Dimes.

That's especially critical when a non-profit organization is asking Affiliates to provide banner advertising space for free, as the March of Dimes does. There are no commissions paid to March of Dimes Affiliates—just the knowledge that they are supporting a good cause. At year end, Bair sends Affiliates an annual statement of the number of banner ad impressions and click-thrus provided, so that they can monitor the value of their public service advertising.

The March of Dimes' Affiliate Program launched in January 2006. As the affiliate manager in charge of the program, Bair creates and posts banners to the My Affiliate Program website — with occasional suggestions and support from a staff of six at KowaBunga! who are assigned to the March of Dimes account. Approved Affiliates then download the banners and post them on their own websites. Banners typically focus on:

Internet surfers who click on the banners are taken to a landing page on March of Dimes' website that includes a call-to-action, such as: signing-up for an event, making a donation, signing a petition, or writing to Congress to support legislative change.

As a well-known charity with a popular cause, many Affiliates have been willing to help the March of Dimes, even without compensation. In the first 11 months of the Affiliate Program, 550 website publishers applied to be March of Dimes Affiliates, of which 70% were suitable to be approved. Approximately 150 would-be Affiliates were turned away because their websites may have involved activities that were not aligned with the mission of the Foundation, like gambling, pornography or smoking. KowaBunga! promotes the March of Dimes to its Affiliate Network, and Bair also actively recruits websites that cover complementary topic areas, such as pregnancy and parenting.

Bair spends about 20 percent of his time as the sole manager of the March of Dimes Affiliate Program, which by November 2006 included almost 400 Affiliates. Thanks to the Affiliate Network, Bair can communicate with all those Affiliates as a group. For the Affiliates that donate the most impressions, Bair does what he can to show his appreciation. For example, he'll occasionally send them promotional items such as WalkAmerica T-shirts along with a thank-you note.

Meanwhile, to complement the efforts of March of Dimes Affiliates, Bair also requests donations of banner advertising space on major Internet portals. It turns out that even the most popular websites have "remnant advertising" available — space that was earmarked for advertising but that was never sold at regular rates. So, Bair asks these big Internet portals to provide some of that unused banner space by filling it with March of Dimes public-service banner ads.