Quick, direct and cost-effective access to Legionnaires

For years, the Kansas Sunflower Legionnaire was mailed quarterly to the department’s nearly 24,000 members at a cost of $30,000 a year. After going digital last summer by emailing its newsletter to members through the marketing company Delivra, The American Legion Department of Kansas now spends $840 a year to educate its members on department, post, district and national news. That’s $70 a month.

“Our membership really enjoys it,” said immediate Past Department Commander Dan Wiley.

American Legion National Headquarters uses Delivra to send out its e-newsletters. And once the company shared with Media & Communication Commission members, which Wiley is a member of, that they would work with departments as part of their relationship with National Headquarters, Wiley was on board after hearing feedback from post-level members.

During his travels around the state as vice commander, he would hear from Legionnaires that they never received the adjutant’s newsletter until after their monthly meeting, which usually fell within the first or second week of the month, so department news wouldn’t be relayed to post members or the newsletter wouldn’t be displayed at the post. “It was information from the department that members weren’t getting,” Wiley said.

Wiley made it his goal to start sending the Sunflower Legionnaire as an e-newsletter upon his election as department commander.

The first issue was emailed out in June 2018.

“Now, our department adjutant has a direct line to 12,000 of our members,” he said.

The Sunflower is sent to all emails that National Headquarters has on file and Delivra has access to, which is around 12,000 Kansas Legionnaires. The department sends the formatted newsletter to Delivra, and in turn they send it out with a dedicated department e-mail account. Kansas has its newsletter designed so every story, announcement or flyer has its own page that can be printed individually and hung at a Legion post.

As part of the $70 monthly fee, the department can send out two e-newsletter blasts. They use the second email blast to highlight an upcoming event, such as Boys State or Youth Cadet Law, and they used it to announce a membership contest.

“I just found (Delivra) to be really cost-effective and really the feedback I got from a lot of members was they never thought they’ve been more informed than they were this last year with the information they were getting,” Wiley said. “When we were doing a quarterly publication we were dating ourselves with the information. When you’re doing a monthly e-newsletter the information you get out is a lot more time-sensitive, timely. Anytime we can communicate with our members quickly is a positive thing.”

For more information, visit www.delivra.com.