Donor Dialogue's social media solution, Ydonate teamed up with Music Saves Lives and The Vans Warped Tour  to give away an autographed 3oh!3 t-shirt to one lucky Ydonate fan. We have our winner....

Congratulations to Ava V. Gesell from Greenfield, WI!!

Donor Dialogue is excited to announce Doug Emig as part of the Donor Dialogue Team!

Douglas Emig has been active in the business software products and services industry for over 25 years. He has participated at all levels of responsibility from individual contributor to executive positions and has sold, delivered and supported software products and services for some of the industry's largest firms. He has worked for the likes of ADP, Oracle, KnowledgeWare, GMFanuc Robotics as well as Computer & Engineering Consultants, Proforma and Xede Consulting group. He has helped sell and deliver mega-ERP implementation projects (Oracle ERP) and small application prototyping projects and most projects in between. His overriding career goal is to help an organization design, build, market, sell and support quality software products and supporting services.

Douglas has both an undergraduate degree (Business Computing System) and a graduate degree (Information Engineering) from Eastern Michigan University.

His technical expertise includes Data Modeling (Conceptual, Logical and Physical), Process Modeling (Swim Lane and BPM modeling), Program and Project Management techniques as well as CRM system design and implementations.

Michigan Blood chooses Donor Dialogue's DRM Touch to recruit, retain and build one-on-one relationships with their donors throughout the donor recruitment life cycle.

Donor Dialogue, a blood donor recruitment partner, has licensed its DRM Touch blood donor management software to Michigan Blood of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The DRM Touch system offers a complete suite of donor recruitment tools that is both highly flexible and easily configured to meet the unique needs of our clients. Once installed DRM Touch provides a single, comprehensive, point of reference for Donor Relationship Management. In a single package DRM Touch coordinates fixed site and mobile drive schedules, group management and access to your schedules via the web for both drive sponsors and donors. The rich data source allows you to create marketing and recruitment campaigns that target the right donor at the right time, thus minimizing the costs to recruit and maximizing the results.

Michigan Blood was looking for a solution that would allow them to increase their appointment commitments from donors while at the same time providing a simple to use solution for both donors and their Tele-recruitment team. The system needed to have robust marketing and reporting capabilities and be accessible via the internet for donors and drive sponsors. Doug Klynstra, Manager of Donor Development and Retentionat Michigan Blood, states, "During the purchasing process, I consulted with other blood centers to help determine which solution would best suit our needs. Donor Dialogue stood out from the competitor products for not only having an innovative product with a wide variety of capabilities that met our growing requirements, but also for being cost competitive and the most responsive to the needs of the client."

"Michigan Blood is a complex, innovative blood center operation that requires premium tools in order to operate at their highest efficiencies and support the growth they are planning." states Doug Emig, President of Donor Dialogue. "We have worked closely with Michigan Blood to ensure that our donor relationship management solution will support their current objectives and future growth strategies. We are very pleased to have such a respected blood center partner become part of the Donor Dialogue client family."

Blood donors can now schedule their blood donation appointments online at Michigan Blood Centers through the DRM Touch web portal at https://donate.miblood.org

• Re-activate type O and type B lapsed donor
• Use telephone recruitment and reminder calling to increase efficiency at community mobile drives.
• Conversion calling campaigns to convert type A and AB whole blood donors to automated platelet and plasma donors.
• Assist centers in evaluating whether they can save operational dollars by outsourcing their telephone recruitment efforts or by supplementing their telerecruitment efforts by providing campaign calling programs.
• Provide cold calling campaigns to assist blood centers in building a donor base in new service areas prior to them opening a permanent fixed donor site.
• Work with blood centers to perform a donor data base analysis and use the information to assist in the development of strategic recruitment campaigns.
• Provide needed donor base clean up programs such as phone appends and clean up of the "Do Not Call" donor list.
• Assist blood centers in evaluating the use of social media to increase recruitment efforts through our Ydonate Facebook Application and social media consulting.

Marketing professionals at Donor Dialogue conducted a survey to get into the minds of the Gen Y crowd and understand their donation habits and see what really motivates them to donate. The survey was taken by students in class from Dakota High School (located in the Metro Detroit area) and students waiting to donate blood in New York at the New York Blood Center. Topics were broken down into three categories: Donor Rewards, Donation Habits, and Gen Y interests.

Of the students at the New York Blood Center, 55.3% have donated before while only 18% of students at Dakota High School have donated before. The top two motivations for both were the good cause and to get out of class while the top two deterrents were never being asked to donate and the fear of needles, followed by not knowing enough about donation. Based on the survey results, it can be estimated that most students in this segment aren't opposed to donating but have not been educated enough on the subject (approx. 50% DHS students, 25% NYBC students). If a blood drive were to be held at their school 70% of the Dakota High School students would donate and 96% of the NYBC students would donate.

In the generation of instant gratification, it should come as no surprise that the Gen Y crowd responded well to gifts & rewards as an added motivator to give blood. After showing both groups the Donor Dialogue Reward Store 78.1% of NYBC students said these gifts would motivate them to give blood at least 3 times, 61.8% of the DHS students said the same. The highest reward motivators are gift cards and a chance to win a trip.

Viral marketing can play a huge role in attracting this generation. This generation is known to look to friends and family for advice and spends an average of 55 minutes a day on social networking sites. 82% of NYBC students and 67% of DHS students say they can motivate at least 3 other friends to donate with them.

So what should blood centers do to attract this younger segment?

1. Educate them first! Donor Dialogue has created a facebook application available to all blood centers that is designed to create donor awareness through videos, featured stories, FAQs, interaction with peers, and more.
2. Go where they are. 8 out of 10 students are on Facebook, each spending an average of 55 minutes a day on the site (up 35 minutes from last year!). Approximately 97% own a computer and 94% own a cell phone.
3. Offer convenience and rewards. Friendly competitions and intrinsic rewards are hugely popular in the social media world. It offers "bragging rights" and acknowledgement for the good cause while creating a viral buzz.
4. Be viral. Word of mouth is huge with this generation. If you can create a buzz, your donors will spread the word and increase your donor base. Social media outlets offer instant viral spread and allow access to a continuous connection of people.

To learn more about blood donor specific social media technologies contact us at 1-800-516-1804 ext. 7361

Donor Dialogue is also pleased to announce the release of version 2.1.6 of DRM Touch in January.  This new release continues the migration of key functionality from our old release (DRM) to our newest platform (DRM Touch) and puts us firmly on track for other planned 2010 releases. In addition, we have expanded the Group Management features and added the ability to implement a custom template for your Donor Chairpeople. All DRM Touch customers should consider implementing this release as soon as practically possible to ensure they remain current with our latest DRM Touch software.  Electronic notification of the new release has been sent to all technical product contacts at each customer per our standard process.  If you have any questions about the content of this new release please review the release notes included in the new release or feel free to contact us a support@donordialogue.com

Keep up to date on the latest happenings at Donor Dialogue as they happen!

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