DateKeeper News

$30,000 Raised, VINA Tailgate Party

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Held this past October, the annual VINA Tailgate Party was a true success! The event which focused on pitting U of M Fans against Michigan State fans in an effort to gain donations towards VINA's cause, raised an astounding $30,000 while utilizing DateKeeper's all-in-one event planning suite.

VINA, a nonprofit organization who's goal is to provide quality, affordable dental care to low income families in Livingston County, stated that DateKeeper was instrumental in helping to keep ticket purchases straight. "Having the entire auction system in one place also made my job much easier.", says Tracy Patrick of VINA. "I have no problem recommending DateKeeper to other nonprofits in the community."

Don't forget to check out more upcoming events hosted by VINA on DateKeeper, Including Have A Heart, Give A Smile happening March 16, 2013.

Reaching Higher Gala, A Great Success

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Reaching Higher, an organization focused on helping young individuals make positive life choices, hosted their 14th Annual Reaching Higher Gala on October 6, 2012. "Our event was a great success!", said Terri of Reaching Higher.

The staff at Reaching Higher was actually able to utilize the DateKeeper system for the first time, and enjoyed the the data management and ticket confirmation tools DateKeeper has to offer. "The staff at DateKeeper is wonderful", says Terri. "I would absolutely recommend this tool to other organizations."

The event, held at the Dearborn Inn, is Reaching Higher's largest fundraiser of the year, and featured a night of fine wines, delicious food, and a silent auction all to raise funds for this great cause.

Don't forget to view this event's photos on Flickr Slideshow!

Get Social, Feed Kids Fundraising Campaign = Success!

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Datekeeper and The Salvation Army of Livingston County are proud to announce the success of Get Social, Feed Kids, a social media campaign geared toward raising funds for The Salvation Army's Summer Lunch Bunch Program. The campaign, which ended Monday, June 11, raised a total of $249, and is thankful to everyone who participated and helped make a difference in the lives of children through out the community.

The Summer Lunch Bunch Program, offered by The Salvation Army in coordination with many other area agencies, has the potential to affect 25.27% of Livingston County public school students who qualify for free or reduced lunch. These lunch programs, available through out the school year, are not provided during the summer time making the program crucial to families in need.

The Salvation Army and DateKeeper would like thank everyone again who participated in this wonderful campaign! Programs like Summer Lunch Bunch are essential to our community and help tremendously in the fight against childhood hunger.

Interested in participating in a future fundraising campaign with DateKeeper? Contact us here to get started!

Twitter Hashtags; Virtual Neon Signs

Laura Bachmann — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Top Tips & Reasons You Need to Use a Hashtag to Promote Your Event

Some of the greatest event and marketing campaigns have developed success by using a hashtag. South by Southwest Event, #SXSW, is well known for their hashtag and they have successfully integrated it into their promotional strategy and marketing materials.

Understanding What A Hashtag Really Is

Hashtags are words or phrases on Twitter with the # symbol in front of it and are utilized through out Twitter to organize Tweets into specific discussion forums. Mostly they are considered to be Twitter conversations. Example: #DKGetSocial, a campaign DateKeeper ran with The Salvation Army of Livingston County, used a hashtag which created a social title/label for the event and a specific Twitter discussion for the campaign.

Creating And Promoting Your Hashtag

Developing a catchy but specific hashtag for your event is extremely important. Creating the hashtag early in your promoting period allows for use in your event marketing materials and helps to get the word out about your event more quickly. Additionally, it empowers and encourages users to begin the conversation before the event date, generating event promotion on their own. Be sure to register your hashtag so there will be less outside interference from non-participants or a chance of another organization using your specific hashtag.

Why Use A Hashtag For Your Event

The answer is simple! Hashtags create another form of brand and event awareness. The reach through social media is endless and Hashtags provide a great outlet to get your event information out there. Just a few tweets from Twitter users can generate the large number of impressions and conversation you're looking to create. You can also organize your hashtag conversation after the event through various tools on the web.

Instagram for Event Planners & Nonprofits

Laura Bachmann — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Taking great pictures at your event has never been easier. Instagram is a free photo sharing program and app for Android and iPhone, that allows users to take a photo, apply a digital filter to it, and then share it on a variety of social networking services, including Instagram's own network, Facebook and Twitter. In just 18 months, Instagram gained over 30 million mobile users and continues to gain more because of its recent buyout to the internet giant, Facebook.

The best way to develop an Instagram marketing strategy for your event is to find your designated photographer or mobile app savvy volunteer or employee. Create an account for your organization and begin to obtain Instagram connections. Here are the reasons why this can help promote your event and organization:

Reason #1: Let your event attendees help spread the word about your event or organization! Have them take their own pictures at your event and share them through their Facebook, Twitter & Instagram accounts. Encourage them to tag your organization's Instagram account or utilize the hashtag you have developed to help track your social media interactions.
Reason #2: Take advantage of the wonderful SEO benefits gained. By naming your Instagram photos with keywords that search engines can crawl and including tags using Instagram's editing features, event attendees will easily be able to find out about your event through organic searches.
Reason #3: Allow event attendees to find you by location! Instagram's geo-tagging gives followers an easy way to map where photos are being taken. This is helpful for event attendees and visitors to promote your event venue and share with friends where they are and what they are doing. They're also allowed to take an Instagram photo and upload it to their Foursquare account using the "check-in" feature, assisting with event promotion as well.

Looking for a few examples of nonprofits implementing Instagram into their marketing strategies? Be sure to check out Oceana and Charity: Water for great ideas and tips.

Get Social, Feed Kids Fundraiser; DateKeeper & The Salvation Army Partner

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

DateKeeper and The Salvation Army of Livingston County are proud to announce the Get Social, Feed Kids Fundraising Campaign geared toward raising money for hungry kids in need!

The campaign runs May 28-June 11 2012, and asks social media users to simply interact on either DateKeeper's Facebook or Twitter pages to earn donations for the summer feedings programs through The Salvation Army.

For every social interaction initiated with DateKeeper, a $.50 donation will be made to help feed hungry kids this summer.

Social interactions include:

Likes
Comments
Shares
Tweets
Follows
ReTweets
Tags
Inclusion of Hashtag #DKGetSocial
& Posts

For more information on how to facilitate the MOST donations towards this cause, go to DateKeeper.org/FeedKids today.

Be sure to check out Get Social, Feed Kids on DateKeeper too and invite your friends to participate!

Interested in what this cause is all about? Check out the summary below:

The Summer Lunch Bunch is program offered by The Livingston County Salvation Army in coordination with many area agencies, schools, and churches. 25.27% of Livingston County public schools students qualify for free or reduced lunch which is NOT provided through out the summer. The Summer Lunch Bunch Program makes sure that kids who are fed through out the school year, don't go hungry! In fact, since it's beginning the program has provided over 17,000 meals to kids in need. With your help, we can prevent childhood hunger together!

Word of Mouth Referrals; Shocking Benefits

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Looking to maximize word of mouth potential? Referral Marketing is the way to do it!

Did you know…

65% of new business comes from referrals
New referrals are 4 times more likely to make a purchase when referred by a friend
9 out of 10 people mention brand names at least 60 times a week in day to day conversation & 66% of that conversation is positive feedback
59% of people say that a driving force in their purchase decision is based on word of mouth.

DateKeeper is looking build partnerships with local venues and other event related industries who come into contact with event planners regularly. To find out how to partner with DateKeeper, and become a member of our preferred venue list, contact us today!

Don't forget to check out this nifty infographic related to referral marketing!

Using QR Codes In Event Marketing, Top Tips

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

With the rapid rise of smart phone popularity, event planners everywhere should consider using QR codes in their event marketing strategies. QR codes have the potential to gain additional customer interaction, and increase success when it comes to reaching the public about upcoming events.

Wondering what a QR code is? QR Codes, aka Quick Response Codes, are 2-dimensional bar codes that contain a set of data such as text, numbers, or link. This data can be decoded by QR Readers, which are widely available as Smartphone apps and can be generated for free through sites such as Kaywa and others like it. This makes it easy to incorporate QR codes into event marketing, and begin taking advantage of the benefits they have to offer.

Here’s how:

Event marketers should consider placing QR codes on ALL event promotional materials. This includes posters, flyers, stickers, press kits, etc… Anywhere that one isn’t placed, is a missed opportunity to gain potential event attendees.

Be sure to point QR codes to a mobile friendly version of your event page/website or social media pages. Don't forget that potential attendees who may be scanning codes are doing so from a mobile device, there for the importance of viewing the website in a format the device can easily read is extremely important.

Thought about providing an incentive to entice viewers to scan codes? Above the QR code, think about placing a call to action that says something along the lines of "Scan To Insert Incentive". Examples could include just about anything, aka: Enter Contest, Enter Raffle, Win Movie Tickets, etc… Once the code is scanned, be sure to incorporate the event information, with in the incentive. This method should increase the number of scans received, there for increasing the event’s marketing reach.

Lastly, don't forget to track, test, and analyze the results of QR codes used during the event marketing process. This provides information about the success of the code, and improvements that could be made in future events.

Reach New Markets Like Never Before!

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

DateKeeper is proud to announce the release of it’s first ever, Facebook application tool, geared toward changing the way nonprofits and event planners market their events through out the community.

Did you know that 70% of people with internet access are on Facebook? Now, through DateKeeper's unique Facebook app, we makes it possible for event planners to implement marketing strategies that will increase attendees and reach new markets like never before!

Effortless Invitations: Make use of Facebook's built-in notification system, by sending out event invitations to the Facebook community.
Generate Buzz: By taking advantage of Facebook's social plug ins, faciliating conversation and interaction on event pages is easier than ever!
Reach New Audiences: Through DateKeeper's one-of-a-kind event suggestion tool, we're able to deliver highly personalized and relevant results.
Community Sharing: Users who attend events can easily make suggestions to their own Facebook friends, and share their event activity via the Facebook newsfeed.
Facebook Events: Events are seamlessly posted into a Facebook friendly format, exposing them to countless new leads in the Facebook universe.

Sound cool? Post an event today, and find out how you can begin utilizing DateKeeper's brand new Facebook application!

Top Tips For Promoting Your Event With DateKeeper

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Now that your event is posted on DateKeeper, follow these easy tips to and gain those extra attendees you've been looking for: ###Social Media Sharing Thought about spreading the word about your event through Facebook, Twitter, or even Google+? No problem. Head to your event and you’ll see several ways to share your event using social media websites across the web. ###Personalized Event Link Our handy set of calendar tools also includes the option to customize the URL that links to your published event on DateKeeper. This makes it simple to place an easy to remember link to your event on printed marketing materials, signage, and even your own website. Look under ‘Advanced Event Details’ when posting an event to customize your URL today. ###Invite Your Friends Be sure to invite your friends and colleagues to your event! Using our unique Facebook invite system, you'll be able to RSVP to events, and invite hundreds of your Facebook friends and colleagues all in one easy step. Don’t forget to tell your friends to forward your event to others too. Word of mouth is one of the best ways to promote your event and gain attendees.

New Upgrades Make Event Publishing Easier Than Ever

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Does your organization often have events that run over multiple days but happen at different times? DateKeeper's new date flexibility upgrades have made inputting events easier and faster than ever.

Not only have we simplified the event publishing process down to only 5 required fields, but we've added the option for users to assign multiple dates and times to events, and even include options to repeat events on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

"Our goal is to make the event posting process as easy as possible" Nick Gronow, Manager of Operations at DateKeeper says. "By making the event publishing system more flexible, we we're able to simplify the posting process for users, and allow them to get through the process more quickly and effectively than ever before."

Users can also look forward to more simplification upgrades in the near future including the ability to add multiple events at once and a streamlined sign up system, that combines sign up and event posting into one easy step.

Be sure to sign up or login and check out the new upgrades soon!

Hey Nonprofits, Thought About Sticking To Your National Branding?

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

For most, large brands like Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and even Coca-Cola are easy to recognize companies and often can be associated with a tag line, logo design, and company description that for many are quite memorable.

The same holds true for large nonprofit organizations across the U.S. including the United Way, American Red Cross, and Salvation Army. With many of these organizations having large marketing budgets, and sometimes even entire marketing departments, they have been able to effectively create strong networks, and supporters of their cause.

Interestingly, many of these large nonprofits, have smaller sub branches through out various city and states across the nation who don’t always stick with their national branding or marketing materials. While its great to adapt to an area’s specific needs, some smaller nonprofits are missing out by not taking advantage of their nonprofits national brand, network, and supporters that are already in place.

In fact, why adapt to a different color scheme, tag line, and even unique logo design, when large nonprofits have these items in place? Capitalizing on a large nonprofit’s branding, marketing tactics, and national network is in any sub nonprofit branch’s best interest. Utilizing these readily available resources can save time, money, and prove to increase efficiency and success of small charity organizations across the nation.

Ticketing System Nearing Completion

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Great news DateKeeper users! Our team has been working hard to perfect our new charity ticketing system, available completely free of charge to nonprofits across Livingston County and beyond.

The launch of this exciting new feature will occur in Jan 2012, and will offer an all-in-one solution for nonprofit event and fundraising coordinators.

Users can expect to take advantage of our easy to use ticketing system along with a variety of other unique features geared toward charity organizations including:

Event overlap prevention system
Reporting summaries including social media marketing, event count down, and guest list tallies
An all-in-one hub to organize ticket sales, proceeds earned, and more!

Be sure to stay tuned for the release of this exciting new feature list coming soon…

Operation Wildlife Rescue

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Do you love animals and enjoy helping local charity organizations?

Great News! DateKeeper.org and the Howell Conference and Nature Center have teamed up to raise funds to protect and save local wildlife! But we need your help...

Until December 19, visit DateKeeper.org on Facebook, click 'Like' and you'll be helping to raise funds for the Wildlife Programs at the Howell Conference and Nature Center during DateKeeper's Operation Wildlife Rescue Campaign.

For each 'Like' DateKeeper receives on Facebook, a donation of .50 cents will be made to the Howell Conference and Nature Center. This donation will assist in the Nature Center’s Wild Wonders Wildlife Park, which is open daily to the public, and helps animals who either are permanently injured or have lost their fear of humans, making them unable to be released back into the wild.

To Get Started:

Go to Facebook.com/DateKeeper
'Like' DateKeeper on Facebook
Share this fundraiser with your Facebook friends!

Thank you for your help and support!

Free Ticketing System

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Exciting news DateKeeper users! Coming soon....a built-in ticketing system, that will allow nonprofits and other organizations to sell tickets to events and fundraisers, free of charge! This new feature will allow for event management to take place, all in one easy to manage suite.

Highlights:

Create Custom Ticketing Types (e.g. General Admission, Student, Senior, etc..)
Process Ticket Sales Through DateKeeper (Free Of Charge)
Choose When Tickets Go On Sale & When Sales End
Track Tickets Sold, Funds Collected & How Many Tickets Are Still Available
Create Custom Links To Direct Buyers For Ticket Purchases,
& Much More!

Be sure to stay tuned, this feature will be here before you know it!

New Logo Coming Soon...

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Although DateKeeper has officially launched, the team is still working hard to perfect the site. With that, comes a new branding approach, including a new logo, which will be debuting this week! For a sneak peak, don't forget to check out our facebook page here.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter as well to stay up to date on the latest Livingston County events!

Looking to post an event yourself? Post one for free here.

We've Launched!

Loni Pryor — Wed, 31 Dec 69 19:00:00 -0500

Here at DateKeeper, we are happy to announce that DateKeeper.org, a community calendar for nonprofits and other organizations has officially launched as of September 30, 2011!

Currently, we have created a custom calendar populated with local nonprofit Livingston County events, and available for free use to public organizations. We also have Michigan based sporting events incorporated into the system, and plan to expand category options and filters as we go. Members of the community are also able to search for and share events as well, and can view detailed information about events such as ticket cost, event website, and location venue.

Be sure to check back often in the future and look for our built-in ticketing system, event management tools, further social media integration, and much much more!

Have more questions? View our Learn More section, or Contact Us.