Northwestern Media and Journity: Making the Right Connections

When Carl Bliss, Interactive Media Manager at Northwestern Media, couldn’t find the technology to strategically connect with listeners of his organization’s radio stations, he decided to build it himself. Fortunately, he didn’t get too far into the process before finding Journity.

At a glance

• Organization: Northwestern Media, St. Paul, MN
• Situation: Northwestern Media owns 15 radio stations in six states reaching almost one million listeners each week. The challenge was building enduring connections with listeners of each station.
• Solution: Use Journity to reach the right listeners at the right time with the right message.
• Results: Converted new listeners to fans, increased donor support to one station, and delivered timely, customized messages.

There’s more to the story

“We knew we were collecting a lot of information about our website visitors, but we were leaving much of that on the table. I saw Journity as a platform that we could use to act on that data and get the most appropriate call to action in front of each site visitor.”

Bliss manages digital properties for the Christian radio network. In just one year he launched 32 campaigns on Journity to support Northwestern Media radio stations.

Christmas music in Madison

Bliss created a Google AdWords campaign targeting people in Madison, Wisconsin who were searching for streaming Christmas music. The ads pointed to the local station, LIFE 102.5, which played Christmas music around the clock. When people landed on the site, Journity delivered a customized message with a “listen now” button so they could hear the station immediately. “Journity was great at putting that connection together on our website,” says Bliss. “And it didn’t take a lot of finagling to get it done.”

“The real win for us was in January, February, and March when the listeners stayed with us. That awareness in December translated into long-term growth.”

Building the donor base at 98.5 KTIS

Visitors to the network’s biggest station must log in before streaming. Using information from Journity, Bliss compared those logins with the station’s donor database to find frequent listeners who weren’t donors, then launched customized calls to action asking them to help support the station. During on-air fundraising, hosts sent listeners to the website, where a Journity message linked straight to the donation page, producing more clicks and contributions.