USO Revitalizes Brand and Drives Donations with Bronto
USO to Lead Bronto's May Best Practices Series Installment
Durham, NC - May 08, 2007 - Bronto Software, Inc. is pleased to announce that Emily Swanson, Communications Specialist with the USO, will share her organization's best practices in the next installment of its email marketing best practices webcast series, scheduled for 2:00 pm EDT May 15th.
For more than 66 years, the USO has provided morale, welfare and recreational services to U.S. military personnel and their families. The USO is a nonprofit, charitable organization, relying on the generosity of the American people to support its programs and services. Today, the USO remains an essential connection for service members far from home, but seeks to improve its brand awareness and their role in improving the lives of American troops and their families.
To address this challenge, the USO implemented a strategic email marketing program using Bronto that includes the distribution of regular email newsletters and donation-solicitation emails. The bi-monthly e-newsletters have proven to be a highly successful means to communicate with service members, strategic partners, military family and friends, as well as the USO's World Board of Governors and Congressional Caucus. The newsletters keep them informed on ways to get involved and helps them appreciate the role that the USO plays today in supporting our military personnel and families. Timely, targeted emails soliciting donations have also been a very effective way to raise a substantial amount of money in short periods of time with low operational costs.
The USO has seen tremendous results since implementing Bronto. Bronto's "Forward to a Friend" function and opt-in features combined with tactical list management helped the USO increase its contacts from 15,000 to 28,000. Deliverability rates improved significantly once bad email addresses were removed from the database. After redesigning their web site and e-newsletter in early 2006, the USO now positions the newsletter as an avenue to lead readers back to their web site. Embedded links drive an increase in web site traffic and online donations after each e-newsletter distribution. In 2006, the USO brought in nearly $100,000 online from e-newsletters and donation-solicitation emails.
Conversion tracking has proven to be the most beneficial email marketing tool for the organization. For example, a Veteran's Day email asking supporters to remember our troops and donate to the USO raised almost $10,000 in just one week, compared to $4,000 on average raised in an 8-week period following a newsletter distribution. Conversion tracking results will serve the organization well in the future as they will be able to segment those contacts that made past donations and send them other emails asking them to continue their support and involvement.
For more information and to sign-up for this month's featured webcast, please visit http://bronto.com/success/.
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