Since Wednesday night, 2,166 customers have contributed $77,906 to a relief effort sponsored by eBags.com to collect donations for victims of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. this week. “The response has been phenomenal,” says Peter Cobb, vice president on marketing.
To help raise money following Tuesday’s tragedy in New York City,
Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, Greenwood Village, CO-based eBags set up a donation link on its web site. The online bag and luggage retailer is allowing customers and other visitors to make donations via credit card, which eBags will process and send to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. “We decided that we had the bandwidth and the technology to handle the traffic and transactions. The Red Cross web site is swamped so we’re able to take some of that overload,” Cobb says.
Beginning Wednesday night, eBags sent e-mails to its database of 1.2 million
customers asking for their help. Part of the e-mail encouraged eBags customers to donate at least $10, which would total more than $10 million for the relief fund. Even before all customers had received the e-mails, the donations began coming in. “Yesterday around noon we had $30,000 in donations and the e-mails had only gone through to about 20% of the database,” says Cobb. He also says several other online retailers have asked to either provide links to the eBags site to help with donations or have asked to use the creative so they could set up similar functions on their own sites.
Kmart Corp.’s BlueLight.com said it will donate all proceeds from sales of American flag and apparel bearing the American flag to the American Red Cross. BlueLight.com is also featuring a link to the American Red Cross for information on how citizens can lend assistance or donate blood.
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