WLRN Modernized Public Media Fundraising With Mailchimp SMS Marketing

The beauty of public radio and television is that it’s free to consume—forever—no strings attached. Unlike a streaming service, cable provider, or paywalled news outlet, WLRN, South Florida’s PBS and NPR affiliate, has never asked anyone to pay for access.

But that model of giving away a service for free can only be sustainable if the community enjoying the content believes in its value enough to provide donations to support it. As traditional funding sources, such as underwriting and government subsidies, have tightened and audience habits have shifted toward social media and streaming platforms, WLRN’s marketing team needed a faster and more personal way to reach the people who are keeping public media afloat.

WLRN switched from Constant Contact to Intuit Mailchimp with that goal in mind, needing a platform that could push them forward with features their previous provider lacked.

“When I started a decade ago, we didn’t even use email,” says Giselle Reid, WLRN Vice President of Marketing and Communications. “Now, digital fundraising is one of the most reliable ways we sustain our mission.”

The challenge: Rigid platforms meant a need to unify email and SMS

WLRN depends on underwriting—similar to sponsorships, but for nonprofits—and major fundraising drives twice a year to cover the cost of reporting and programming. Those campaigns are imperative to the station staying afloat financially.

But by 2024, the marketing team at WLRN felt like it was reaching the ceiling of what those email communications could do. Open rates steadied and donations plateaued; if the station was to reach more people who cared enough about public media to support it financially, it needed a new channel to speak through.

WLRN wanted their audience to feel an immediate need to donate during high-stakes fundraising drives, but email lacked that sense of urgency.

Constant Contact’s rigid platform didn’t offer SMS at the time, and using third-party vendors proved unreliable and expensive. The systems they were using were slow, hard to integrate, and failed to show a clear return.

WLRN needed a more connected system that could work alongside email, so they turned to Mailchimp’s unified platform to drive fundraising, achieve high ROI, and break through the plateau.

The tools: SMS marketing, segmentation, forms, and A/B testing

Mailchimp gave WLRN the kind of connection they needed. The team consolidated its email and SMS outreach into a single platform to create one audience view and a single place to plan every campaign. That ability to toggle between channels without switching tools made every message faster to produce and easier to measure.

“I merged our SMS and email lists into one audience, and now everything is in one place, so it definitely makes our lives easier,” says Amber Boozan, Email Marketing Strategist at WLRN.

The platform’s ease of use, Giselle adds, made it possible for WLRN to quickly cross-train their marketing staff in case last-minute tweaks are needed to a campaign.

With clear segments and flexible SMS credits, WLRN could send the right message to the right supporter at the right time, whether that be a hurricane preparedness guide, an investigative story, or an appeal to fundraising.

WLRN used segmentation to target high-value donors while automatically suppressing recent donors to prevent message fatigue while the frequency of messages increased.

And using Mailchimp’s embedded forms helped the newsroom drive more contact sign-ups while A/B testing fine-tuned subject lines and SMS formats—use of images within SMS messages drives better click-through than those without. That ability to toggle between channels without switching tools made every message faster to produce and easier to measure.

“Mailchimp is great because they allow that flexibility,” Amber says. “We buy the minimum credits per month because our sending is unpredictable and when we do have these months where we go from sending zero texts to 5 or 6, we’re able to pay as we go.”

The results:  Significant ROI, high click-through rates, and increased donations

WLRN learned quickly that SMS messages sent through Mailchimp in addition to email drove faster responses, higher engagement, and more donations. The station attributed more than $100,000 of its $1 million fall drive to Mailchimp, validating the team’s multi-channel approach.

During WLRN’s fall 2025 fundraising drive, adding SMS to their campaign raised an additional $34,450.

Click-through rates told a similar story. After A/B testing formats and timing, WLRN’s average SMS click-through rate is 47% higher than the average Mailchimp customer’s.

“When we send a text, we see the money start flowing right away,” Amber says. “It’s never a worry finding the money to spend on this because we always know we’ll make it back.”

WLRN’s return on investment makes a difference to their finances and their community’s well being. With Mailchimp powering their multi-channel marketing, they can reach people where they are in the moments that matter most—and keep the journalism free.