Katherine Watier
March 26, 2001
CCTP 722-01 Marketing on the Internet
Internet Presence and Marketing Strategies of Three Environmental Non-Profit Organizations: Defenders of Wildlife, World Wildlife Fund, and Greenpeace
Most non-profit websites target a diverse range of audiences. The three sites in this analysis are no exception. What ties these sites together is their work to educate and encourage environmental activism on the issues of clean water, clean air, endangered species, climate change, and habitats. They all use some form of community to engage and increase member involvement with the organization, and some form of basic rule-based personalization along with viral marketing strategies to increase the number of potential supporters and activists. All of the sites deal with international environmental issues, but two of the sites (World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace) are more internationally focused. They use the web site as a portal to the field offices that have their own branded web sites.
The three sites are engaged (or are constructing the technology to engage in) Silverstein’s “Seven Proven Marketing Strategies”:
1. generating and qualifying leads
2. promoting products and services
3. executing e-fulfillment
4. building customer relationships
5. establishing business communities or exchanges
6. creating and managing partner programs and
7. selling goods over the Internet. (Silverstein, 2001:103)
They all use these strategies to enhance donor relationships, cultivate interest in non-donor/non-members, promote services, streamline members’ activism and information gathering (especially among educators), encourage community, and promote and sell branded product through ecommerce. This analysis will determine which site is most successfully engaged in the seven strategies and explain why. The answer lies in the visitor’s ease of use, the clarity of the branded experience and the demonstrated involvement in an established virtual community.
World Wildlife Fund www.wwf.org or www.panda.org (international site) or www.wwfus.org (US site)
The World Wildlife Fund was founded in 1961 and, partially due to its strongly recognized panda logo, is the largest privately supported international conservation organization in the world with more than 1 million members in the U.S. alone. Since 1961, World Wildlife Fund has invested in over 13,100 projects in 157 countries. In its effort to increase awareness for preservation efforts, World Wildlife Fund utilizes a full range of membership services and benefits (both through virtual and physical incentives) and also engages in a range of donor acquisition and solicitation techniques. It has truly developed multiple points of access for a supporter of the organization through the acquisition of individual donations, information about major and planned gifts, corporate support, ecommerce and retail support via its website. Its audience receives a highly personalized experience through its direct mail and online one-to-one marketing efforts. The site is designed as an informational introduction to the organization with a few enhanced options for repeat visitors.
World Wildlife Fund has multiple websites which all branch off from www.wwf.org. This analysis will focus on the international and US site. Both sites are brightly colored and full of images of endangered species and nature scenes. Each issue area is branded with its own color, though the corporate logo is present throughout. The international site (Appendix W.1) targets at adult audience and their motivations for visiting the site. There is a press section for reporters to learn about the organization’s stance and research on a number of issues, a large educational section, a resource section, a corporate information section and an action section. This international site is also offered in French and in Spanish. Unlike the US site, the youth section on the international site is targeted at adult educators and teachers, not the youth, and primarily provides curriculum.
The international site is designed primarily for their unqualified prospect audience – the casual surfer who is driven to the site in search of research, current press or curricula. The site is focused on generating leads (i.e. interest) in the organization. Even though the site is dynamically generated and the content refreshes daily, there are no personalization techniques in place throughout the bulk of the site to make the return experience different from the first. They have attempted to create a minimal amount of relationship-building content for their repeat visitors by developing a “What’s New” as well as”Story of the Day” sections. The main site is designed as a first level relationship-building device for WWF to generate leads and promote their products and services. It utilizes a one-to-many marketing strategy with the more personalized experiences (utilizing personalization techniques) occurring once the user becomes involved in cyber activism and grassroots marketing.
The US site has targeted their audiences more specifically within their navigational structure. They address each of their audiences specifically (educators, kids, members, etc.) and as a result are more focused on using the site as a way to sustain and build their donor and partner relationships (Appendix W.6). At the same time, the US site has more general content targeted to a wide range of audiences in an attempt to create a diverse prospect pool. It is beginning to develop a member’s corner where members of World Wildlife Fund can receive virtual incentives in exchange for becoming a critical part of their grassroots marketing strategy. There are also two options for educational materials – one for the educator, and a completely different branded site for young people. The US site offers youth an opportunity to play games, take quizzes and sign up for a youth oriented newsletter as well as other incentives (Appendix W.8). The activist section for the US site is also a separately branded sub site, which offers fewer options for incentives after the user participates in one of their campaigns that the international site (Appendix W.9). The Action Center is placed within the template of the rest of the site and the user is easily able to navigate back and forth.
World Wildlife Fund International’s Action Center is distinctly different creating an environment that illustrates their emphasis on utilizing their membership as grassroots marketers and activists (Appendix W.4). Each issue section had an activism list with calls to action and a link to the user’s “Panda Passport” where the heavy-duty activism begins. Once a user logs onto their personalized passport, their activities are recorded and presented in a printable certificate (Appendix W.5). New campaigns are automatically filled in with the user’s information and the viral marketing techniques used to enable the user to spread the word about the campaign are seamless (Appendix W.3).
Both the international and US sites offer e-fulfillment of donations, however the offline speed of acknowledgement of a gift leaves something to be desired. (It took this researcher 4 weeks to receive a hard copy acknowledgement for an online gift). Both have e-giving capabilities, which present the potential donor with a case statement followed by a secure credit card form which the user submits (Appendix W.2 and W.7). The user is then thanked for their gift and immediately offered free online screensavers. A confirmation email is then sent to the donor, and the hardcopy follow-up thank you letter follows weeks later.
The multiple World Wildlife Fund sites are confusing to a casual browser. Only after an extensive stroll through their site does the user realize that the international site was not the US web presence, though the visitor never feels as though they have left the World Wildlife Fund family. From a donor perspective, however, it is easy for the user to be confused about what exactly his/her donation supports (nationally versus local) and how that donation might be affected by what level of the website they give through. If a user decides to donate to World Wildlife Fund International, a user can become “trapped” and is unable to browse to other areas of the site due to the fact that there is no navigation on that page.
Even though users of the newsletter are asked to fill out address information in order to access the different action centers, the user isn’t automatically put on the house list to receive print solicitations and direct mail campaigns. This researcher has been an e-activist for 4 months and has yet to receive World Wildlife Fund print publications. E-activists are also not asked for their support via a direct appeal (email for instance). Whereas asking over email is a relatively new approach, it might be one that these sites would want to consider.
Greenpeace www.greenpeace.org
Greenpeace began in 1971, when a small but determined group of activists boarded an aging 80-foot boat, slowly making their way through the cold North Pacific waters off Alaska. Their mission was to "bear witness" to the destructive nuclear weapons testing planned for Amchitka island (www.greenpeace.org ). It is an independent campaigning organization that uses non-violent direct action to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions. Greenpeace differs from the other non-profits in the sense that it does not accept financial support from corporations, governments or political parties. Eighty-one percent of its financial support comes from individual donors. The reasons behind this deliberate revenue source restriction are explained within the organization’s annual report: “Greenpeace neither seeks nor accepts donations, which could compromise its independence, aims, objectives or integrity. Greenpeace relies on the voluntary donations of individual supporters and on grant support from foundations” (Greenpeace Annual Report, 1999).
Greenpeace is primarily an activism-based organization. It is possibly one of the first environmental non-profits to utilize Internet technologies to aid its activists and increase communication internationally for the organization. Greenpeace’s use of technology has been deliberate and strategic. Its history of launching onto the Internet, which it started in 1994, can be found on its website (www.greenpeace.org/history.shtml). True to its organizational culture, when it first established its first website, it utilized shareware and freeware (Linux) on a donated computer. Unfortunately, the feel of the early Internet beginnings with Gopher and newsgroups are still present in the current International website making (the activism section), and it is a little difficult to understand from a user’s perspective.
The design of this site is pointedly different in that it graphically looks as though a non-professional designed it in comparison to the other more corporate looking sites. (Appendix G.1) It has a definitive home-ground look with a nature-patterned background (which changes upon a refresh though the content does not). The drive to becoming active is much stronger on this site with the largest section being a column for Campaign News, and big buttons for Activism and Join.
The navigation along the top is a brief insight into Greenpeace’s customer cycle with (from left to right) options for information, interacts and joins. The navigation clearly illuminates Greenpeace’s Internet marketing objectives. The first step is to educate the visitor about Greenpeace and how the organization works to support environmental issues. The next step is for the visitor to join the organization as an activist and interact via their online community. The final step is for them to join the organization via a financial donation.
The International Greenpeace site is driven more toward motivating the visitor toward direct action versus just receiving information or current news. However, by limiting their focus to sustaining existing relationships (and there are issues with their approach in this area as well which will be discussed later), Greenpeace International is hampering its growth as an organization. Customer cycles for business and non-profits are similar in that one gathers a large number of prospective supporters/customers and then qualifies those leads by virtue of their demonstrated support and their potential for support based on demographic research. Customer and donor relationships are often not lifetime relationships, and thus requiring the organization to continually develop new prospects. Without this pool of new potential supporters, the organization becomes stagnant and Greenpeace’s web strategy is feeding this deterioration of their prospect base by making their website difficult to navigate for a new user and with content that is only focused toward their qualified audience.
The Greenpeace activism site does not appear coordinated with each of its different campaigns taking on different cosmetic appearances based on the partnership that is involved in that campaign (Appendix G.2). For instance, the Lapeyre.org protest was a direct link from Greenpeace’s site, yet it is difficult to return to the main activism site. This is an example of Greenpeace’s effort to encourage business partnerships
One of the main ways that Greenpeace attempts to encourage community and enhance their members’ benefits is through their Cyber activism community section. Unfortunately, on Greenpeace International site is not much better in regards to usability. The site simply contains a list of threaded discussion boards (Appendix G.4 and G.5). The user can create a personalized protest letter, but there is not an option for the user to send news about the campaign to their friends on either the international or the USA site. The International site does not utilize personalization techniques (the user would have to remember if they completed a campaign or not) and there are no personalization techniques in place that record the user’s personal information so that in the future the user can just hit a submit button. (These features are utilized on the USA site, Appendix G.7). Also, once a user enters the other areas of the International site’s cyber activist section, it is not abundantly clear how one would return to the Greenpeace main page. The “home” button on the page routes the user back to the top page of the cyber activist’s section and not to the main page of the entire site.
Partially due to the fact that US Internet users are accustomed to a more corporate look, the US site is strikingly different in its design, navigation and content than the International Greenpeace site (Appendix G.6). The US site has an easier navigation system and displays the content in a cleaner and more corporate fashion. This site does offer the user a personalized activism experience, but only after filling out extensive personal information (more than was asked on the other two sites) the technology was mal-functioning (Appendix G.7).
Greenpeace USA has a feature not found on the other two sites: the user of a members only section where members can renew their membership, change their online profile and view the Greenpeace Magazine. This section of the site utilizes personalization techniques that enhance the user experience. The US site is also working on installing an ecommerce feature that is not yet fully functional, and it will be interesting to see what kind of strategy they employ. This site has also developed a very small licensed products section (Appendix G.8).