Doing good by sharing messages: An investigation of “You Share, We Donate” campaigns and how they can attain viral success

Abstract

With the rise of social media, companies are engaging in a new type of cause-related marketing classified as “You Share, We Donate” (YSWD) campaigns. YSWD campaigns encourage consumers to share the company’s campaign message, with the promise that the company will donate to a designated cause, and the total donation amount is linked to the number of “shares” the message gets. Thus, the success of these campaigns depends on the campaign's virality. In order to understand what organizations need to do to set up successful YSWD campaigns, we investigate the linkage between donation cap (non-)specification—an important design element—and YSWD campaign success. The results of the analyses of 574 real-world YSWD campaigns and four experiments show that donation cap non-specification encourages consumers to share the campaign message more than when a donation cap is specified. However, this effect diminishes if a company is perceived as highly credible.