Cambridge, MA-based cMarket has created an online auction destination to help nonprofits boost their coffers.
BiddingForGood.com, which went live about a year ago, serves as a central landing page for the charity auctions the company faciliates. Through regression and statistical analysis, cMarket is helping clients determine not only what types of items get the most interest, but what sort of e-mail reminders will solicit increased bidding and when those should be sent.
The company began offering Internet auction services for schools and nonprofits about four years ago. At that time, the auctions were not linked in any way to one another, says Jon Carson, CEO.
"About a year and a half ago, our head of customer support came in and said 'Have you ever heard of Dr. Bill? Dr. Bill has bid over a million and a half dollars across a zillion auctions.' Dr. Bill was an orthodontist in Wellesley, MA," says Carson. "His kid went to a private school that had auction with us. He bid in that auction, saw the 'powered by cMarket' logo, clicked on that and found other auctions."
The company dug into its database and found that there were thousands of similar bidders in the files. Realizing that a community was beginning to form, Carson has his team develop a basic database query to allow users to search all the auctions, and created the BiddingForGood homepage as an umbrella for all its auctions.
In the spring, at any given time BiddingForGood hosted anywhere from 200 to 250 auctions; at press time over 15,000 items were available for bid. The site, which currently has almost 80,000 members, was relaunched in March, to put a greater emphasis to personalization. Currently, members receive about two e-mails a week promoting the various auctions. Soon, those will be customized by geography.
"Right now, the e-mails are general," he says. "It would be of limited interest to someone in Boston if the Tucson Zoo had four tickets up for auction. But Red Sox tickets would be relevant."
But even with the one size fits all strategy, bids from the general member community are driving 35% of the winning bids. "That's got to be the low end of the bar," he says.
Working with Harvard Business School professor Deepak Malhotra— who has a background on negotiation and game theory—cMarket did regression analysis and statistical correlation to develop 138 predictive and operational algorithms to help nonprofits determine the best auction strategies.
Almost 4000 events are currently in the database, and the company analyzes bidding patterns to help clients determine other factors, such as when to end an auction, says Carson. "Who would have known that for local Jewish organizations Thursday night from 6-7:30 is the ideal sweet spot to close out auction in terms of response rates?"
For more about how nonprofits are using online auctions as part of their fundraising strategies, see the June issue of Direct.
