I first became familiar with eCRM, not as an employee of a SaaS company (Convio, which is where I work today), but as an end user of Convio's eCRM software.

A charity bike ride I had helped to start in Austin, Texas, in 2000--Hill Country Ride for AIDS--had stumbled along in its first couple of years with around 100 riders and $100,000 revenue for its annual charity ride. When we first encountered online marketing, we were primarily excited about its ability to accept online donations for our event. That first year of using eCRM, we almost doubled our ridership and income!

Over the last six years, our sophistication as a fundraising organization has grown as the functionality of eCRM has dramatically increased. We have delved deeply into the fundraising functionality for teams and individuals through online mail campaigns, team and individual web pages, individual fundraising events like house parties, and viral marketing through social networking pages. This year we are anticipating around 500 riders and we expect to pass our raised income of $550,000 from last year!

That's a pretty impressive rate of growth over the past 8 years. I attribute much of that growth to our ability to promote our ride through online marketing and fundraising. Feel free to stop by my page and make a contribution! :)