Overview

The right message to the right audience.

More than 118  radio stations. Combined coverage of more than 60 million people.  The Bott Radio Network, which broadcasts quality Bible teaching, Christian news, information, is a fast-moving organization that needs a flexible, responsive marketing approach to match.

That’s Andy O’Neil’s job. As Digital Media Manager for Bott Radio Network, he helps the network leverage its website to create strong connections with listeners.

 

Organization:

Bott Radio Network, Overland Park, Kansas

Situation:

The Bott Radio Network reaches 60 million people around the nation with more than 118 stations in 15 states. The network needed a way to convert one-time listeners into long term fans while supporting it’s ministry partners.

Solution:

Use Journity to gather listeners’ contact information and build relationships with them.

Results:

∙ one simple promotion captured 400 new contacts in 10 days

∙ flexible platform for creating promotions quickly

∙ responsive, collaborative customer support


The Details Explored

More than 118  radio stations. Combined coverage of more than 60 million people.  The Bott Radio Network, which broadcasts quality Bible teaching, Christian news, information, is a fast-moving organization that needs a flexible, responsive marketing approach to match.

That’s Andy O’Neil’s job. As Digital Media Manager for Bott Radio Network, he helps the network leverage its website to create strong connections with listeners while also supporting the network’s ministry partners – churches, radio personalities, authors and faith-based events. “We set our own goals and look for ways to help the network grow,” he says. One of his primary goals is to expand the network’s database of listener emails so the organization and ministry partners can connect with listeners more effectively about programming and events.

O’Neil capitalizes on events and promotions with ministry partners to gather listener information rather than following a structured marketing plan.  To support that approach, he needs a flexible way to respond as those opportunities arise. That’s why he depends on Journity, the personalization platform designed to help organizations connect directly with their digital audiences.

Journity’s robust features and simple interface make it easy for O’Neil to build branded, customized promotions and launch them on the network’s website. Depending on the complexity of the promotion, it takes O’Neil between 15 and 45 minutes to produce a promotion.

“Journity is fairly intuitive,” says O’Neil. And when he has questions, the Journity team is at the ready. “I have my Journity customer service representative on Slack so I can ask questions any time. And when I hit a limitation on the platform, they help me work it out.”

Recently, O’Neil used Journity to run a campaign that pointed visitors from the Bott Network Radio website to a ministry partner’s site where they could find information about a special event in Nashville. O’Neil stated that he uses the geolocation feature of Journity heavily in other campaigns as well.

For another radio program, O’Neil used Journity to design a message offering a limited number of free books to visitors on the Bott Radio Network site. If visitors clicked on the message and provided their contact info, the ministry partner sent them a book.

“Our ministry partner set aside 400 books for this promotion,” he explains. “We blew through 200 books in two days. And within 10 days we’d gone through all 400. They were pleased.” 

That effort yielded the network and the ministry partner 400 new, qualified contacts for future promotions.

O’Neil uses the grouping function in Journity to organize his audience based on the type of Bott Radio Network programming they’re interested in — Bible teaching, news and current issues, or family and marriage. When O’Neil runs a promotion he includes an option to indicate their interests to capture that information. Then he uses that data to customize future promotions to each group.

It’s that ability to personalize promotions that makes Journity so powerful says O’Neil. “There are hundreds of tools out there to get traffic to your site, but there really aren’t any for creating onsite ads like Journity,” he comments. “Journity takes visitors by the hand and walks them through your site.”

Soon, website users on the Bott Radio Network site will see a whole new look and content. With the new website, O’Neil sees even more opportunity to connect with listeners using Journity. “Our new website will contain more content to make the website ‘sticky,’ which provides even more opportunities to use Journity with returning traffic,” comments O’neil.