My colleague Katya Andresen, Network for Good’s Chief Strategy Officer,  recently shared a summary of reports from the CMO Council with nonprofit marketers on her blog www.NonprofitMarketingBlog.com.  The top five concerns for CMOs are also relevant for cause marketers, who also face the challenge of achieving better engagement through social and other integrated channels.  In fact, a survey of CMOs found most companies still lack a “seamless multi-channel journey for the customer.”  Add to that the challenge of relating cause marketing and social good campaigns to the overall marketing strategy and you can see why the following five topics keep marketers up at night.

If you are formulating your to-do list for 2012, make sure you add these priorities:

1. Making over digital marketing
2. Aligning marketing and sales (read: marketing and fundraising or communications and fundraising)
3. Integrate social media channels
4. Better analyze customer data
5. Better measure performance

The countdown to New Year’s is on and many are reflecting on the year and making resolutions to improve themselves and their world in 2012.  Network for Good’s partner Causes.com, the leading social good Facebook application, has just launched a new community – Connect For Good – to help us all make a positive impact next year.  The community has kicked off through a partnership with AT&T to raise awareness for three relevant issues: the dangers of texting and driving, the importance of recycling cell phones and the crisis of declining high school graduation rates.

Starting today, the 170 million members of the Causes.com community can use the Connect For Good platform to take small digital actions and trigger contributions by AT&T to non-profit organizations including the National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS) and The Nature Conservancy. These organizations collectively will receive up to $200,000, as a result of the digital actions taken by the Causes Connect For Good community. For example, Causes.com members can generate $2 for NOYS by taking a pledge not to text while driving and then can generate an additional $2 for NOYS by sharing the pledge with their own network of friends and family on Facebook.

The new Connect For Good community provides a powerful example for companies of inviting consumers to join them in making a positive impact on the world.  Research by Cone, Edelman and others demonstrates that consumers want to partner with brands in social good and hear more about corporate social responsibility programs.  Additionally, social media and integrated communications trends point to a consumer desire to co-create content, conversation and brand identity alongside companies.  The Causes.com platform puts all the pieces together to foster meaningful collaboration between Facebook users and brands around social issues important to many.

Keep your eye on this cause community in 2012.

To learn more, please visit www.causes.com/att