When it comes to promoting a cause, marketers are finding that it’s best to get specific. Targeting certain customer segments and using signature cause products is increasingly popular among nonprofit and charity organizations looking to engage consumers and corporate sponsors.

Whether it’s LiveStrong’s iconic yellow bracelet, or the American Heart Association’s (AHA) red-dress pin given as a thank-you to those donating to its Go Red campaign (focused on women’s heart heath), these products not only give donors something tangible for their gifts, but are something of a badge of honor that gives them social currency with friends and family.

“It’s about awareness building, and strengthening affinity with that cause,” says Anne Erhard, vice president of cause branding and nonprofit marketing for the firm Cone, which developed the Go Red effort. “Within these campaigns are a lot of areas for consumer segmentation,” she adds. Cone has helped the AHA develop several targeted campaigns, including the Power to End Stroke, aimed at African Americans, and Start!, urging physical activity for the general American population. 

For-profit companies both large and small are promoting their cause-marketing efforts through similar strategies. Blue Sky Scrubs, which sells stylish scrubs for female health professionals, announced in mid-September that it would donate a fashionable hospital cap to a cancer patient for every set of scrubs purchased.

“We just recently started promoting this charitable aspect,” says David Marquardt, CEO of Blue Sky Scrubs. “We realized that it was kind of a growing area and we wanted to make as big of an impact as possible.”

The economy has certainly presented challenges for the nonprofit sector, but it remains a major user of promotional products. Organizations like Autism Speaks offer full online stores that not only offer ways to donate and support the cause, but segment their messages for the time of year (Autism Speaks recently targeted its message around a back-to-school theme).

Indicative of the growing significance of marketing in the nonprofit sector, the American Marketing Association recently hosted its first Senior Nonprofit Marketers' Summit in Chicago, bringing together 18 top executives from American Red Cross, AARP, United Way, American Lung Association and others to discuss strategies.

“The nonprofit sector has always been a vibrant, but not always well-recognized, marketing sector,” says Cynthia Currence, chair of the conference. “If ever there was a time to use all the levers that are available, it’s now, and marketing has been a perennially underused function for these organizations.”

But while these marketing areas are growing, charitable events remain a mainstay for nonprofits seeking to strengthen their appeal. “Events are the most traditional outlets nonprofits use for promotional items, but the ways they are using them are changing,” says Erhard. “Now you find sophisticated pop-up stores, rather than just a T-shirt. Also goodie bags at the end of the event, and promotional tents co-sponsored with corporate sponsors, with co-branded items and products and sampling.”

These days it’s not even necessary to walk into a showroom to buy a car – thus the push for current dealers to court existing clients more aggressively than new ones. Still, somehow dealers and auto makers must get individuals to walk through the door. How?

For starters, dealers are trying to court consumers in a more sophisticated manner, says Karl Brauer, CEO of Total Car Score, an upcoming car rating website that’s based in Camarillo, CA. The Internet, along with a more skeptical, demanding consumer, means dealers are having to beef up websites, in-store displays and interactive tools.

That’s showing up in promotional products as well, for the segment of dealers willing to spend a little extra to impress would-be car buyers. For example, one savvy promotional products distributor recently created a customizable, biodegradable tumbler for Tesla Motors, the American-based manufacturer of high-end electric sports cars and sedans. So customized was the tumbler that its interior color matched the Pantone color choice of Tesla, with the car maker’s information molded into the bottom of the mug, rather than the supplier’s. 

Not only was it an item with a high perceived value, but it “matched the look and feel of the car that consumers were buying, and the colors on the brochure, so it really enforced the brand they’re seeing at the dealership and out in the marketplace,” says the distributor.

For 20 years one promotional products distributor in the Midwest has handled a steady stream of orders from upwards of eight local car dealers in his area. “We’ve dealt with them through good and bad,” so to speak, says the distributor.

And, while market swings have affected orders, none of that has affected them so much as the recent shift in how dealers are targeting clients these days. In particular, the distributor says, where once dealers were more focused on promotions to bring new customers into their showrooms, these days their marketing strategies are more about keeping existing clients. In fact, Goldblatt says, mailers urging consumers to test drive vehicles are almost nonexistent in his area.

“The loyalty fight is on, for sure,” says Brian Bolain, national marketing communications manager for Lexus, based in Torrance, CA.  The company, he says, predicts as many as 1 million additional cars to be sold this year above last year’s sales.

Still, “it’s more cost efficient to retain customers than to lose them and try to get them back,” he insists, adding that even though Lexus enjoys a loyal customer base with a retention rate upwards of 50%, they use regular promotional products and marketing campaigns to keep the clients they have.

In fact, Goldblatt works regularly with a local Lexus showroom and says the owner is more eager to market to existing customers with regular mailers and thank you gifts (think high-end umbrellas and travel mugs) meant to entice buyers back in.