Rush Limbaugh Club of Orange County, Calif. Uses Vontoo Voice Messaging

Client: Rush Limbaugh Club of Orange County
Goal: Monthly Meeting Reminders

When organizers of the Rush Limbaugh Club of Orange County, Calif. want to gather their fellow members, they turn to Vontoo voice messaging (http://www.vontoo.com). Through a partnership with Vontoo, the club’s monthly meeting reminders have gone beyond overused communication channels such as e-mail and mail to one of the most personal methods of conveying a message—the telephone. As a result, the positive participation by club members matched with a decrease in expenses is bringing a balance to the group’s efforts of which any fiscal conservative could be proud.

The club’s leadership found Vontoo’s calling service while researching various methods of voice broadcasting. “I had looked into technologies like automatic dialers,” explains current club president Nancy Padberg. However, the automatic dialers, or “autodialers” Padberg found didn’t seem to provide the whole solution. Most of the devices that are available on the market call a list of phone numbers and then route the live answers to a bank of waiting volunteers or call center agents. This solution proves highly difficult for small to mid-sized groups like Padberg’s that need to decrease volunteers’ time investment.

Vontoo’s approach is completely different from outdated phone dialer techniques. As the world’s first permission-based, on-demand voice messaging system, the company uses patent-pending technology along with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) to deliver a pre-recorded phone message to a list of both land-line and Internet-based numbers. The list is provided by the organization using Vontoo’s services. Each Vontoo client manages its own list and is only permitted to contact those individuals that have previously agreed to receive regular communications. In the case of the Rush Limbaugh Club of Orange County, this unique stipulation fit well with the organization’s own protocols.

After accessing Vontoo’s user-friendly Internet interface, the club leadership entered its membership roster into the system. Each month, Padberg now updates the membership list and records a simple message over the phone that details the club’s meeting topic, location and any other critical details. Once Padberg schedules the recorded message for delivery, it is sent automatically in mass to the home, business or mobile phones of the members.

“We’ve been using Vontoo’s automated message service for about 11 months and I think it’s been a very positive experience,” shares Padberg. “It’s also extremely economical.” Prior to using Vontoo, the club had sent out multiple reminders via mail at a postage rate far higher than Vontoo’s per-call expense. Equally important to cost savings, Padberg believes that the personal connection the messages create result in a membership that is more engaged in each event. ”Unlike other reminders, people actually hear a voice they recognize and are likely to respond to,” she explains. “I can also draw better attention to specific details for the meeting. We usually receive several new registrations after sending out each message.”

Occasionally, people sign up for a single event while they are in the state for a short visit. Padberg says this makes the ability for recipients to opt out of future messages a major advantage. “It allows us to save money on upcoming calls by not distributing to people we know won’t be able to attend,” she says. After each voice broadcast, Vontoo generates a report that tells Padberg which individuals not only opt out, but also which calls were listened to by a live person versus received by a voicemail system or answering machine.

“While our club continues to grow and we’ve had very few opt-outs, it’s important to know who is most engaged in our activities,” emphasizes Padberg. “The reports I receive make this much easier to determine.” Vontoo President and Co-Founder Dustin Sapp agrees that the tracking features Vontoo provides are an ideal method for non-profits, political and service organizations to cost-effectively track member involvement. “Associations often spend a great deal of time and money distributing surveys which may not prompt timely and accurate responses,” says Sapp. “Yet nothing tells you more clearly how your group is being received than knowing if people are listening to a message or hanging up. It’s one of the most economic, immediate forms of feedback an organization can obtain.”

As for the Rush Limbaugh Club of Orange County, Padberg says they plan to continue using Vontoo to promote future events. “I would be happy to recommend Vontoo to anyone,” she offers. “I would tell them it’s a great service.”

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