10.31.2006 - 10:09am ET

(CSRwire) CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 31, 2006--Leveraging rich data gleaned from hundreds of its online charity auctions, cMarket adds a revolutionary analytic feature to its OurAuction Pro product suite that makes fundraising auctions practically foolproof by predicting auction outcomes and offering best practices intelligence to help nonprofits reach their fundraising goals.

In an innovative, easy-to-use platform, cMarket's new SmarterAuction feature drills down the data collected from 1,500 cMarket auctions in more than a dozen cause categories to help its nonprofit clients run a more successful auction. Other new platform features include International Bidder Registration, which facilitates bidding in foreign currencies, and an HTML Editor that allows home page customization with easy-to-use formatting tools. The new features are included in the cMarket auction service and integrate seamlessly with its online product suite OurAuction Pro.

SmarterAuction will help nonprofits realistically refine their online auction goals, better understand the factors that contribute to a successful auction, plan their auction based on specific objectives, provide instantaneous tracking progress, make course corrections and predict their auction's outcome - all based on quantifiable data from cMarket auctions.

"cMarket has more experience than anyone else with online auctions for nonprofit causes. Now, with SmarterAuction, we're able to tap that experience in measurable ways to maximize our clients' chance of success," said CEO and Chairman Jon Carson. "This has never been done before."

Charity auctions are a time-tested nonprofit fundraising tool. More than 300,000 nonprofit auctions are held annually in the United States, raising $14 billion. Approximately 98 percent of these are offline, one-day events. But online auctions remove the barriers of time and the space constraints of traditional charitable auctions, offer the ability to engage a global audience, and provide measurable results for fundraisers, boards of directors and contributing sponsors.

cMarket's SmarterAuction offers the enhanced ability to track and improve an online auction. A real-time auction meter, which appears on the SmarterAuction dashboard, calculates the chances of reaching a fundraising goal based on the auction's logistics and lifecycle. SmarterAuction then allows clients to track each element of their auction against goals, optimize variables that would increase revenue, and review multiple scenarios proven to yield higher results. When a client is logged in, cMarket also provides proven auction tips and reminders keyed on the specific auction and its lifecycle.

"SmarterAuction is indispensable for small and mid-sized nonprofits," said Carson. "Fundraisers can find out what it takes for an organization like theirs to run a successful auction and get the help they need to do it. It levels the playing field for smaller charities to have the same resources and access to donors as much larger organizations."

cMarket's SmarterAuction also helps nonprofits as a flexible reporting tool, providing historical records of auction statistics that not only provide accountability to sponsors and donors but also can be used to plan future auctions. Many nonprofits, particularly smaller ones, must plan their auctions with skeleton crews and volunteer committees that don't have previous experience and access to historical data. SmarterAuction provides a comprehensive database that's easy and intuitive to use to benefit all nonprofits.

SmarterAuction was developed with guidance from Deepak Malhotra, Ph.D., a Harvard Business School professor who serves on cMarket's advisory board. Malhotra has done extensive research on charity auctions and trust development with focus on behavioral aspects of decision making in a competitive environment. He is especially interested in how to create escalation of commitment, competitive arousal, and auction fever in an auction environment.

"SmarterAuction applies powerful historical data on bidder behavior to optimize supply and demand factors that affect the success of all fundraising auctions," Malhotra said. "This new feature fundamentally changes the way auction planners will manage their auctions."

For example, if an auction is at risk for not meeting its goal, SmarterAuction might suggest adding higher-priced auction items from its online catalog, cMarketPlace. Or, it might remind auction planners to send out additional emails to its online community of potential bidders. It lets nonprofits compare the predicted effectiveness of adding more catalog items versus securing more sponsors. SmarterAuction can advise which day of the week is best for a particular organization to open or close an auction and how long the auction should run.

"Who would have thought that Sunday is the best day to send emails for most organizations, but Saturday works equally well for others? We also know to look for a very predictable spike in the last few days of an auction, but for some organizations, the first two days can tell us almost as much about how their auction will perform." said Jeff Reid, Director of Corporate and Product Analytics for cMarket. "SmarterAuction breaks down cMarket's auction data by organization size and type to give a particular nonprofit a distinct advantage in auction planning and management."

Donya Sabet, who chaired the auction committee for The Ethel Walker School in Connecticut also helped advise cMarket on SmarterAuction's design. "This will really help an auction committee to see where they are headed and give a roadmap to success," she said.

The intelligence that drives SmarterAuction is continually updated with real results from cMarket auctions. Currently, the database offers historical data from 1,500 auctions that featured a combined 160,000 catalog items and drew 560,000 bids from 64,000 bidders.

With the release of SmarterAuction, cMarket introduces other enhancements to its OurAuction Pro that streamline the auction experience for planners and bidders.

-- International Bidder Registration makes the auction experience more fluid for international bidders by automatically translating foreign credit card transactions to U.S. currency. This feature extends the reach of even the smallest nonprofit to the global community.

-- HTML Editor allows nonprofit auction planners to customize their auction home page with formatting tools as easy to use as word processing software. No HTML knowledge required.

About cMarket

cMarket is the leading on-demand, online auction platform solely for organizations engaged in fundraising for non-profit causes. With more than 1,500 customers, online auctions powered by cMarket.com have generated funding successes by allowing organizations, both large and small, to identify new sources of income and, at the same time, build mission awareness and heightened caring for the cause. cMarket services national non-profit organizations such as United Way, JCC, Junior Achievement, Catholic Charities, The PTA, and the American Red Cross. cMarket also works with companies including Ford, Deloitte & Touche, Kimberly-Clark and General Electric to raise funds for their nonprofit causes. cMarket, which was founded in 2003, has headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. For more information, visit www.cmarket.com.



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