Conversations with Cause Marketers:
Jenny Kompolt
Online Charity Auction Pioneer

Way back in 2000, Jenny Kompolt was working for eBay when she got a hunch that internet charity auctions were going to be big. She started an auction management agency in her home – and spent a lot of time explaining to potential clients just what her company did.

Four years – and hundreds of successful auctions for high profile companies and causes later – a lot of people have caught on. So much so that Kompolt & Company expects to go public later this year and is developing software to make its management methods available to a much broader audience.

The power of well-run online charity auctions to generate publicity and funds is making them increasingly popular. To cite three recent examples: Ellen DeGeneres collaborated with Coach to raise $25,000 for Peace Games by auctioning off a customized Vespa, General Motors raised over $137,000 for the SAE Foundation for Science and Technology Education by auctioning the second Chevy SSR off its production line and The Today Show garnered $83,000 for Project A.L.S. by selling its Green Room Book on eBay.

Online charity auctions can be true win-wins for cause marketing partners, Kompolt told CMT from her new San Luis Obispo headquarters. Marketing executives and their agencies get excited about building online charity auctions into their cause marketing programs because they can generate tremendous “brand shine.” Nonprofit leaders see online charity auctions as a way to significantly broaden auction participation – eBay now has 105 million registered users -- compared to traditional live events.

“The potential of online charity auctions is huge,” according to Kompolt. The problem, is the “My wife sells dishes on eBay so how difficult could it be to run an online auction” syndrome.

Running a small, local, low-profile online charity auction does not require the services of a sophisticated agency like Kompolt. But when the stakes are raised, when a major corporation links its brand to a high-profile online charity auction, that is when serious management is needed.

To help our readers, Kompolt shared these tips on producing a winning online charity auction.

Five Keys to a Successful Online Charity Auction

1) Establish a Clear Direction

Before you start to plan an auction, determine what your top priorities are. Are you looking to drive brand awareness or “GMS”(gross merchandise sales, online auction lingo for money)? If you don’t establish your goals up front, you can’t really develop a plan. If you don’t have a plan, you are planning to fail.

2) Create a plan for driving traffic to your auction

The ability to reach out to millions of bidders is a major advantage of online auctions versus traditional live or silent auctions. You won’t capitalize on this, however, unless you make people aware of the opportunity.

Three common tactics employed to drive bidders to online charity auctions are: i) Media partnerships (e.g., enlisting a magazine or television show to get involved), ii) celebrity involvement (e.g., persuading star supporters of a cause to donate items and generate publicity) and iii) outreach to cause supporters.

3) Manage your merchandise mix.

Offering a high-profile item (a yacht, a celebrity’s watch, etc.) is great, but in most cases, it makes sense to offer merchandise at low, mid and high-price levels. This enables a wider spectrum of consumers to participate.

4) You must have good customer service and bid management.

There is nothing more aggravating – and potentially damaging to sponsoring brands – than to discover that the highly publicized winning bid on your auction’s signature item was bogus. That is why Kompolt strongly recommends using a bidder pre-qualification service on high profile, high revenue items.

To increase the chances of receiving high bids, it is important to make sure that all potential bidders receive excellent customer service. This builds bidder confidence that they will be treated fairly and that the item they are bidding on will be delivered as described.

5) Assemble a strong auction team.

Depending on your resources and the level of publicity you expect to generate, your auction expertise could come from 1) an in-house expert, 2) an experienced, trusted trading assistant or 3) an auction management company.

You can learn more about Kompolt and online charity auctions by visiting www.kompolt.com