Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Replyforall, How to Make Your E-mail Messages Matter


How easy is it for everyone to contribute to a cause and create an impact to the world? It turns out you can do charity by just e-mailing.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Enmi Kendall the founder of Replyforall. Enmi is an amazing example of a new generation of young adult who’s more concerned about creating an impact on the world through meaningful action than earning money in a status profession. By capitalizing on her experience in social media industries, Enmi started a business that combines elements of technology, advertising, and fundraising into a viable new fusion of business and charity.

Replyforall, is an online service, that helps social media and internet users to support their favorite causes and promote common good in an easy and practical way. The name Replyforall is wordplay on the everyday occurrence of “reply to all “action while e-mailing. Replyforall is a simple, practical, and sustainable way to support causes by using email and outgoing Facebook messages with the Replyforall email signatures. By inserting the signature in their e-mails, users can include good cause messages and advertisements from the sponsors of those causes. The more emails that are sent and the more new supporters that are recruited, the more funds are driven to the cause in an exponential way. Every e-mail that is sent and every new member that is enlisted via the e-mail message generates and drives a portion of advertising revenue towards a cause. Thus, Replyforall’s innovation is in leveraging something that almost everyone does and turning it into something that can create social change.

The Relpyforall’s link is automatically embedded in the sent e-mail with colorful and attractive badges. Both receiver and sender instantly know which charity is supported, which company is sponsoring the charity and the direct impact of that e-mail on the chosen cause. The receiver also receives an invitation where they can instantly sign on to participate.

Replyforall rigorously measures and reports the impact of all of their supporters’ activity. Already in less than 11months 11,467 people have been provided a day of HIV testing and AIDS education, and clean water for year has been provided to 3,077 people. These are just two of the causes that Replyforall has impacted since its inception. The users also increase the donations via the “recruitment” of the recipients of their emails. Thus the users participate in the value that is created exponentially for the causes that matter to them.

Enmi also displays all the necessary qualities of an entrepreneur; that of having a vision, persistence, grit and the willingness to do hard work. Because she has funded this enterprise with her own means, she also displayed the self sacrificing characteristic of “learning to do more with less” My absolute favorite quote from my interview was a very personal one. She said: “I am a runner. The best advice I would give to anyone doing a venture of this sort, is to consider this a marathon, not a sprint."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh! this is world class write up! had to share with facebook!@bose
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