Direct marketers of all varieties are pitching in to help survivors of the disaster at New York City’s World Trade Center as they too try to cope with the shock of the event.
A fair number of firms, ranging from marketing giants like America Online to catalogers like the Company Store, have set up links to make donations to the American Red Cross.
As of Thursday, the Direct Marketing Association set up a clearinghouse for donating products, services and funds to the major support efforts that are underway had received several hundred responses from its members.
Responses included everything from copywriters looking to donate their services for charitable direct mail efforts to telemarketing firms willing to set up phone fundraising operations, and database and other back-end services, said DMA president H. Robert Wientzen.
Wientzen also noted that on Wednesday, the DMA had received about $250,000 in donations for the disaster victims to be funneled through the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and possibly others.
Along the same lines, online credit services processor Paybyweb, Inc., Largo, FL, launched its “Donate for Disaster Relief” fund on Wednesday to help reduce the heavy volume of online traffic to the Red Cross and other sites which are virtually inaccessible due to heavy congestion.
And Ottawa-based of Oracle database administration services outsourcer The Pythian Group volunteered several database disaster-recovery experts to the more than 155 businesses affected by the collapse of The World Trade Center.
Other companies are offering useful donations one might not think of right away.
AT&T, for example, is planning to give $10 million pre-paid long distance calling cards for use by relief workers in the both New York and Washington, DC. where the Pentagon suffered a similar fate as The World Trade Center. At deadline, the telecommunications giant was still figuring out the best way to distribute these cards to the workers, spokesman Mark Siegel said.
Ironically, online marketer 1-800 FLOWERS.COM found the tragedy led to a small increases in business. ” We are having people calling us and saying ‘go get something for people and we know you are in the New York area’,” said spokesman Ken Young.
Just the same, the Westbury, NY-based firm suspended mailings it had scheduled for this week.
“It’s no time to be sending out solicitations,” he said.
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