Learning Center

Benefitting from cMarket's Online Sponsorships

What It Is

Sponsorship opportunities are an integral part of online auction fundraising. They add value to your auction and give you the chance to earn additional revenue apart from your auction items. cMarket's templates make it easy for you to promote placements within your catalog and email communications to generate sponsorship dollars. Our auction management system gives you the ability to promote these opportunities and track click-through rates to manage your sponsors' investments.

Value of Online Auction Sponsorships

You can generate even more revenue when you introduce Global Sponsorship opportunities to your community. In addition to homepage and email placement, you can now offer sponsors the chance to have their logos appear on every page of your auction site. Plus, you can track the click through rates for each sponsor logo.

Sponsorship Opportunities

cMarket provides three types of sponsorship opportunities. You can offer individual placement, or combine options to create packages to suit the needs of your sponsors.

• 1. Global Sponsorships: Logos that are placed in the right sidebar of every page in your auction site are referred to as "Global Sponsorships". There are three levels of Global Sponsor: Platinum, Gold & Silver tiers. In addition to the homepage, these sponsors have the benefit of appearing on every page of your auction site, providing maximum visibility. You can customize the names of the sponsorship tiers and offer different sized logo placements to define the value of each tier.
• 2. Homepage Sponsorships: Offer your sponsors the opportunity to have a logo placed on the homepage of your auction site. The homepage is generally the entry point to your catalog with visitors pausing on the page to learn more about the auction and the organization. The homepage provides a great deal of visibility for sponsors. There are eight positions available in the designated sponsor area of the homepage, plus two call-out boxes towards the top of the page.
• 3. Email Sponsors: In addition to your auction site, your email communications can generate sponsorship dollars. Every email you send to your community through our auction management system can accommodate up to 10 sponsors housed in the right sidebar of the email.

Learn more by watching this 4.0 New Feature video, also located in the Resource Center of the cMarket Auction Tools:

Increased Sponsorship Opportunities - What it Is

How It Works

Visit the Sponsorship Center to find our more about Homepage, Global and Email placements and to learn how to manage your sponsors. We also provide helpful resources that will show you how to promote these opportunities, and offer training and discussion forums where nonprofits like you may share sponsorship tips and ideas.

Managing Sponsor Information

When you are ready to add a sponsor to your page, you must first create the sponsor in our auction management system. Our system recognizes a sponsor as simply a donor that has been designated a sponsor. This is done in an effort to eliminate extra work and the need to re-enter information if your sponsor has also donated an item to your catalog.

When you Add New Donor or edit an existing entry, use the Sponsor Info section of the form to enter and manage information. Select "Is Sponsor" to designate the donor as an auction sponsor. Enter the value of the sponsorship, the contribution type (such as: cash, in-kind trade, or both cash and trade) and any additional comments before you save the entry. You must specify "Is Sponsor" in order to select them for a Homepage, Global or email sponsorship in your auction.

Enter the Donor Name, web address and upload a logo for your sponsors as you would enter information for any other donor. A logo is not required for homepage and email sponsorships - the sponsor's name will be displayed in its place, however it is required for Global Sponsorship slots. You can include the web address to have a link associated with your logo as well. If there is no website address available, you can leave it blank and the logo will not be hyperlinked.

When you upload a sponsor image that is 120 X 120 pixels or smaller, the image is saved exactly as-is. Standard advertising logos that are 120 X 90 and 120 X 60 will also fit. Animated GIFs that are 120 X 120 or smaller will be applied and any images with a height or width larger than 120 pixels will be automatically converted into JPG format and resized to fit within the 120 X 120 pixel limit for sponsorship images.

Selecting Global Sponsorships

Global sponsors appear in the right sidebar of every page in your auction. You can customize the names of the three tiers and assign specific values to each level. You also have the option of adding as many Global Sponsors as you choose. Sponsorship levels must contain at least one sponsor for them to appear on the page, if you do not have any Global Sponsors selected, the right sidebar will not appear on your auction site.

To add a Global Sponsor, select the name of the sponsor you wish to include from the list on the left hand side of the page, and click the Add button . The sponsor's logo will be automatically applied to one of the Global Sponsor tiers. If the sponsor's name does not appear on the list, return to the sponsor's information using the Donors and Sponsors tool to make sure that the "Is Sponsor" box is checked and that a logo has been uploaded.

You can select the order in which sponsors appear on their levels by choosing the sponsor's name and using the up and down arrows to change the placement of the logos.

By default, the labels for the three sponsorship levels are Platinum, Gold and Silver. You can edit these labels and rename the tiers; or if you prefer to remove the labels altogether, simply delete the text and leave the name blank.

When you are finished editing your Global Sponsor settings, you must click the Save button to apply these changes to your auction site.

Selecting Homepage Sponsorships

There are ten sponsorship slots on your homepage. Two are featured in the call-out box towards the top of the page, and the remaining eight slots are in the sponsorship area at the bottom of the page.

As you create or edit a homepage, select the sponsor you would like to appear in each slot. You can preview your homepage before saving it to see how the sponsors' information looks on your page. Once you've made your selections, along with any other edits to your homepage, click Save to apply these changes to your auction site.

Selecting Email Sponsorships

When you use our auction management system to send email communications to your community, you have the ability to add up to ten sponsors in each of the emails you send. Email sponsorships appear in the right sidebar of the email template.

When you are creating or editing an email, select the sponsor(s) you would like to appear on the page. You can preview your email with the sponsor information included before you send it. Once you have selected your sponsors and have edited your email, click Save to apply the changes.

Sponsor Performance Report

The Sponsor Performance Report provides an overview of all of your sponsor information including their value and type of contribution. It also contains the number of impressions and click-through rates for each sponsor.

The number of impressions refers to the number of times a sponsor's logo is viewed on your auction site or in an email communication.

Click-throughs are the number of times a user has navigated to a sponsor's website using the clickable logo on your auction pages or within an email communication.

In addition to showing total impressions and total click through rates for each sponsor, this report also shows impressions and click through rates for each of the three sponsorship types: Global, Home Page and Email.

Give your sponsors the opportunity to see just how worthy an investment it is to place a logo on your auction site when you share the information in the Sponsor Performance Report. This data can be used to show how valuable sponsorship opportunities within your site are, and it can also be a helpful tool when obtaining sponsors for your auction.

This report is also effective at evaluating your sponsorship program as a whole. You can review and assess the overall program, and plan out sponsorship initiatives for future auctions.

Learn more by watching this 4.0 New Feature video, also located in the Resource Center of the cMarket Auction Tools:

Increased Sponsorship Opportunities - How it Works