New Etsy App – CauseGood {Exciting Stuff}

You have to check this out!

There’s a brand new Etsy app that will make giving back through your Etsy shop super easy and rewarding.  This app does all the hard work for you, and helps you to clearly show the cause you’re supporting with each purchase from your shop.  Give a tree, give clean water, give meals to fight hunger…check out CauseGood now!  It’s even easier than you might think!

Why Give Back?

If you’re anything like me, you like to support businesses that make the world a better place. If I have a choice, I almost always choose products that make a positive impact. I’m not alone. In fact, recent research shows a whopping 9 in 10 American shoppers say they’ll switch to a product that supports a cause!  How’s that for a reason to give back?!

Of course, there are plenty of other reasons your Etsy shop should give back to charity with every sale:

• It helps your shop stand out from the crowd
• It helps your shop get discovered by shoppers searching Etsy for products that give back
• It helps build a positive shop brand and increases customer loyalty
• It provides a great reason for both you and your followers to share
• It makes customers more likely to recommend you to friends and family
• It makes you feel like you’re doing your part by giving back…that’s a good thing!!

So if shoppers want to support businesses that give back, and doing so provides so many other benefits, why aren’t more Etsy sellers jumping onboard?

The short answer: it’s just too hard to set up, track, prove, and manage.

Most Etsy sellers have enough on their plates running their businesses on the side of their day job, and as much as most would like to do their part, they simply don’t have the time. Luckily, from what I’ve seen so far of the CauseGood app, all of that is about to change!

How the CauseGood App Works

Visit their site right here to get all the details, but here’s a little overview…

The CauseGood app is incredibly straightforward to set up. It walks you through a three step process that only takes a few minutes.

First, that app asks you to choose a cause to support every time a customer purchases one of your participating listings.

Rather than being a dollar-amount or percentage-based donation, CauseGood has worked with their nonprofit partners to translate your shop’s donation into what it means in terms of on-the-ground impact.

For example, rather than donating 1% of proceeds {whatever that means}, shoppers know exactly how their purchase makes the world a better place (e.g. plants a tree, provides clean water access, gives meals to the hungry). Shoppers like this sort of campaign a lot more, since every time they use the product they bought from your Etsy shop, they get to think about the good that it represents.

Once you have selected a cause, the next step is to choose which listings will participate. You can include all or only some of your listings.

Try to find a way to tie it into your shop. For example, if you make ceramics, perhaps you could give meals with every purchase of one of your bowls. {I love, love, love this idea, and it already makes me want to buy one…just sayin’!}

If you make clothing, perhaps you could plant a tree with every purchase of one of clothing items that have green on them. CauseGood doesn’t charge any more to include all of your listings, so there isn’t any downside to doing that.

Finally the app has you pick a subscription plan and launch your CauseGood campaign. They have a free level, but premium levels start at an affordable $9/month.

A few minutes after you launch your campaign, the content for the cause you chose {Buy one : Give trees} appears on your listings in Etsy. You’ll get a link to use to share your participating listings and a bunch of nice-looking images to use on social media to drive traffic to back to your shop.

Once your campaign is live, the CauseGood app tracks any sales of participating listings for you {and give you a nice dashboard to track them in}, and charges your shop monthly for any owed donations. If you decide to cancel, the campaign is automatically removed from your listings and tracking is turned off.

All in all, the app is super easy to use and quick to set up. You don’t have to create a CauseGood account to check out how the app works, so can poke around in the app before deciding to sign up or not.

Plant a Tree for Free Today!

CauseGood offers a limited free plan in addition to their premium plans—which vary by the number of participating listings that you are allowed to sell in a month. You can start a free trial and upgrade or downgrade at any time, so pick a plan that fits where your shop is now and try it out!

In celebration of the Earth Day launch of their app, CauseGood has generously offered to plant a tree for every Etsy shop that starts a premium trial for the rest of the month of April!

Plant your shop’s tree for free today at CauseGood!

Anyway, I think it’s an awesome idea, and I know many of you will love it!  Click here to visit the site and read all the details.

Happy Earth Day!

~ Kim