TueTiimiä: Digitalized Word of Mouth Enabled Growth – Support for Children, Youth, and Associations Exceeds €250,000

Almost every parent or active member of an association has at some point bought or sold treats, socks, or toilet paper to raise funds for an association, sports team, or school class. Established in 2019, TueTiimiä.fi modernized fundraising by developing a platform where purchasing products from GOOD DEED COMPANIES® can support a team. Since the company entered an industry dominated by a few large traditional players, a key part of its strategy is to build credibility by collecting and publishing feedback from people who have tried a new type of fundraising.

No more filling out paper lists, collecting money, and distributing products to buyers. Instead of time-consuming toil, TueTiimiä.fi enables fundraising from the comfort of home in just a few minutes.

– The service is completely risk-free: The team registers for free and starts sharing the sales link. When someone makes a purchase through the link, the support amount is recorded in real-time on the counter visible on the team’s page. We handle the shipping of orders, and the money is transferred to the team,” says TueTiimiä.fi founder Erno Meriläinen.

For everyone accustomed to traditional fundraising, this sounds too good to be true. TueTiimiä has identified this as the biggest obstacle to registering new teams.

– With Trustmary, we collect feedback from genuine teams and team leaders. Seeing their feedback encourages others to try, Meriläinen explains.

Erno Meriläinen and Anna Nikkanen, responsible for marketing and communications at TueTiimiä, explain how TueTiimiä uses reviews to convince people of the ease of their service.

Growth Happens Organically – Without Sales

When TueTiimiä was founded, the initial people had to be convinced to join through cold calling. Because their expectations were met, word began to spread automatically.

– Nowadays, we don’t need to do outbound outreach to acquire customers. Instead, all customer relationships and even the good deed companies approach us on their own, describes Meriläinen.

TueTiimiä invests in marketing both organically and through paid channels. They have recently started experimenting with using customer feedback as copy text for paid advertising.

– A few weeks ago, we put out the first ads on Facebook and Instagram utilizing team feedback. We want to highlight social proof and emphasize that we’re not just the easiest and best way to fundraise according to us, but according to our real customers, Nikkanen says.

– In this campaign, the CPC (cost per click) has decreased by -51%, meaning we have more than halved the costs. In addition to using social proof, the difference compared to before is that we are now handling advertising completely on our own. In any case, both factors have certainly had a positive impact, Meriläinen says.

Our CPC (cost per click) has decreased by -51%, meaning we have more than halved the costs.

Erno Meriläinen, Co-Founder @TueTiimiä.fi

Over 400 Feedback from Customers

When a campaign organized by a team comes to its end, the team leader is asked to fill out a feedback form, inquiring about their experiences and opinions.

– With feedback surveys, we receive a lot of information about what people like and what we could improve, says Meriläinen.

– We receive really good feedback from teams, and there’s a lot of it quantitatively. So far, we’ve already received over 400 customer feedbacks from teams, Nikkanen adds.

One word stands out in the customer feedback: “ease.” It was repeated so frequently in the feedback that TueTiimiä decided to change its slogan to reflect the feedback received.

– Our initial slogan was ‘Every purchase counts,’ which we thought was clever. Through customer feedback, we realized that we should speak the same language as our customers, says Meriläinen.

–We had already been considering refining the slogan earlier, but the customer feedback sealed the deal for streamlining the slogan. Our new slogan is ‘The easiest fundraising in Finland,’ says Nikkanen.

Thanks to collecting and analyzing customer feedback, TueTiimiä now speaks the same language as its customers.

The slogan has been so successful that even the company’s competitors have tried to copy it.

Partners Approach Proactively

TueTiimiä has launched the GOOD DEED COMPANY® concept, which means that partner companies participate financially in supporting Finnish school, hobby, and association activities.

In practice, this means that the company offers products at a discount or for free on the TueTiimiä platform, or the company engages in other collaborations beneficial to fundraisers.

– We have a really extensive network of partners. This enables us to offer products in our store that people want to buy, and no one has to push anything unnecessary. Every purchase made through us benefits teams, says Meriläinen.

As TueTiimiä has such a good reputation, and the service is loved by both customers and supporters, they also attract Good Deed Companies inbound.

– For example, Finland’s largest publishing house, WSOY, contacted us themselves when someone from WSOY encountered TueTiimiä.fi through their own child’s team fundraising. They found our mission important, and of course, WSOY also wants to support Finnish clubs, classes, and associations, Meriläinen clarifies.

 For example, Finland’s largest publishing house, WSOY, contacted us themselves when someone from WSOY encountered TueTiimiä.fi through their own child’s team fundraising. They found our mission important, and of course, WSOY also wants to support Finnish clubs, classes, and associations.

Erno Meriläinen, Co-Founder @TueTiimiä

TueTiimiä’s mission is to help teams fundraise efficiently, so that the costs of hobbies for families can remain reasonable and everyone has the opportunity to participate.

In Finland, children’s and youth mental health and the risk of exclusion have long been in the spotlight as the fees for more and more sports are rising, while families have less and less money available.

Successful fundraising may significantly reduce or even completely eliminate participation fees.

–We want to do our part in supporting children and young people. When young people stay involved in hobbies, the risks of exclusion decrease, Nikkanen describes.

–Together with our partners, we have already made countless children’s hobbies possible, class trips happen, and associations continue their activities. We have directed over €250,000 in support to children, youth, and associations. This is a great example of how the business world can act as a resource for the benefit of society, Meriläinen concludes.

As the company’s activities are so invaluable and transparent, one of TueTiimiä’s partners is the Finnish Parents’ Association, which is a national expert on parental involvement and cooperation between homes and schools.

Feedback on the Website Builds Trust

When something sounds too good to be true, people need a lot of reassurance that the service is actually reliable.

The best impact comes when someone relatable, such as a friend, recommends it. This effect can also be achieved on websites when the recommender is in a similar situation.

TueTiimiä has three target groups:

1. School classes
2. Sports clubs
3. Associations

– We have Trustmary widgets all over our websites. They are placed on different landing pages so that they display the most relatable feedback,” says Nikkanen.

For example, on a landing page targeted at sports clubs, there are feedbacks from other clubs to provide relatability and encouragement to create their own campaign.

Additionally, reviews have been widely used in newsletters and social media.

– In our marketing communications, we always keep credibility, reliability, and relatability in mind at every turn. The reviews collected by Trustmary are a convenient way to digitize word-of-mouth marketing. Through that, we boost volume, Meriläinen explains.

Trustmary Digitizes Word-of-mouth Marketing

Approximately half of the teams register for the service based on a recommendation from someone they know, so scaling recommendations from traditional word-of-mouth to digital social proof has accelerated growth.

For 3.5 years, TueTiimiä has experienced tremendous growth almost entirely organically because it has succeeded in digitalizing its word-of-mouth and prominently featuring it on its website.

– TueTiimiä is such a young company in the fundraising field that competitors have a significant head start in terms of awareness. As a new entrant, we must be able to bring transparency and visibility. Trustmary makes this easy, says Meriläinen.

– Using Trustmary saves time. Once the settings are in place, feedback is automatically updated across multiple channels, Nikkanen adds.

Nikkanen and Meriläinen are satisfied with the quality of Trustmary’s service and the continuous development of the application.

– Trustmary takes care of its customers and updates its service. We are constantly evolving as a company, and it’s nice to see that the services we use are evolving too, Nikkanen says.

Trustmary takes care of its customers and updates its service. We are constantly evolving as a company, and it’s nice to see that the services we use are evolving too.

Anna Nikkanen, Digital Marketing Specialist, @TueTiimiä

Meriläinen agrees and particularly praises their account manager included in their Full-Suite package.

– We have regular check-ins to see where we stand. I would recommend Trustmary to anyone who wants to collect customer feedback and display it on their website or online store effortlessly, she concludes.

Features in Use:

• Widgets
• Social media sharing
• Feedback surveys
• Gathering recommendations
• Reporting
• Tagging reviews