Like any nonprofit organization, the USO (United Service Organization), needs a consistent flow of donations to fulfill its mission. Message Digital, a full-service digital agency, was called upon to help. With Message Digital’s digital expertise and Acoustic’s marketing platform, USO was able to slash time to market, and show how marketing was delivering donations. With insights gleaned from the campaigns, Acoustic enabled relevant, personalized, consistent donor outreach — and ultimately more charitable donations for the USO.

Today’s media and communication landscape is more crowded than ever. Potential donors to non-profits are deluged with requests from worthy causes. 

In the last 25 years, direct mail has been joined by email, social media, text messaging, and other electronic messaging as channels to help drive donor activity. Of those, however, consumers prefer organizations to communicate via email. With this landscape in mind, and in the wake of high-profile digital marketing success stories such as the 2008 presidential campaign, Acoustic partner, Message Digital, saw a surge of interest in its digital marketing services. 

The USO also recognized these landscape shifts. It was confident that making a robust email program part of its marketing mix would help it continue to drive the donations it needed to carry out its mission year after year. It reached out to Message Digital to help.  

The USO is a congressionally chartered, nonprofit organization serving members of the U.S. military and their families. The USO is not part of the federal government, and as a nonprofit organization, it depends on generous donations from individuals and corporations to support its charitable work.

Message Digital got right to work for the USO. Message Digital knows that when it comes to donor outreach, personalized messages drive results. A full-service digital agency, Message Digital provides strategy, creative, analytics and tools that power political campaigns, causes and companies. 

Brian Sisolak, Vice President, Technology Services at Message Digital, explains: “Whether we’re working for a candidate, cause or commercial brand, engaging the audience and inspiring them to take action are our key goals. Personalization is a powerful way to grab someone’s attention, and we’re always looking for innovative ways to tailor our communications.” 

Message Digital relies on Acoustic Campaign to drive consistent, relevant and personalized outreach at scale. Harnessing the Acoustic platform, Message Digital slashed the time-to-market for the USO’s first digital campaign. 

“Acoustic Campaign is deeply embedded in our digital marketing offering,” comments Sisolak. “For example, we feed data from Acoustic Campaign into our custom analytics portal, which enables our clients to see how their campaigns are performing against their key performance indicators. Crucially, Acoustic Campaign is fully integrated with our payments gateway, which enables us to process contributions on our clients’ behalf.” 

Sisolak adds: “Every year, we evaluate whether Acoustic Campaign is still the right digital marketing platform for us—and every year, it comes out on top. One of the things we appreciate most about the solution is Acoustic’s commitment to continuous development and innovation—particularly around campaign analytics.” 

Thanks to Acoustic Campaign, USO gains deep insights into how people interact with messages. By mapping out the paths that recipients take through its acquisition and contribution flows, Message Digital can identify donors and inspire them to contribute to organizations like the USO. 

Today, Message Digital remains one of the USO’s partners for digital marketing services. Working with the USO’s creative agencies, Message Digital uses Acoustic Campaign to help plan, design and execute its targeted email campaigns. 

“One of the biggest benefits that the USO sees in the digital channel is the flexibility and responsiveness it offers,” comments Sisolak. “Whereas direct mail campaigns are typically planned out months in advance, we can make changes to digital campaigns right up to— and in some cases even on—the day of the launch.” 

“We are always advocating for smarter ways for our clients to reach their audience, and over the years we’ve pioneered techniques that have since become staples of the marketing industry,” says Sisolak. “Our work with the USO has empowered them to raise significant donations on the digital channel—helping them support their work with U.S. military service personnel around the world.”