Church Marketing Sucks

Email can be an efficient and cost-effective method for your church to communicate. The #cmschat on Twitter recently covered email marketing and we collected some of the best tips and insights:

• Use a Service: Don’t send church emails yourself with a huge blind carbon copy list (or worse, CC-ing your entire church!). Sign up for a service such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, Aweber, Campaign Monitor, Infusionsoft, BombBomb, iContact, etc. MailChimp is even free if you send fewer than 5,000 emails per month.
• Statistics: The main benefit of using a service mentioned above is you can get all kinds of statistics on the effectiveness of your emails. Is anyone opening them? Is anyone clicking on anything? You should know that info.
• Simple Subscription: Another benefit of a service is that subscribe/unsubscribe requests can be done by the people wanting them, not your overworked pastor or staff. Plus, if you’re sending email you need to be abiding by the anti-spam laws. These services follow the rules. Your cobbled together BCC list? Probably not.
• Purpose: What’s the purpose of your email list? What have you said you’ll send to them? Make a promise and then deliver on that promise regularly. Whether it’s weekly church updates, monthly inspiration or sporadic ways to serve, make sure you’re being specific about what the list is and then following through. That will boost your response rates.
• Personalization: Make your emails personal if you can and include first names. Most services make it easy to add a “Hello Maria,” to your email (or an alternate option if you don’t have someone’s first name).
• Subject: Spend time crafting your subject lines. This often determines whether or not people even open the email. You want urgency but not hype. Often clear and direct is better than something too creative. Of course people are fickle: The Barack Obama re-election campaign discovered that “hey” was the most effective subject line (but they also relentlessly tinkered and tested).
• Important: Focus on content that is high priority, important and useful. There’s so much junk flooding inboxes that you can’t afford to send something so-so.
• Time: When you send your emails is important. Think about when your audience would have time to open and read your emails. Most emails are read within hours of being received, no matter when they’re sent. Test to find out what works best.
• Assess: Take a look at your email stats and see what works and what doesn’t. If you get a really low open rate or a really high click through rate, look at what you did and try to determine what caused it. Make changes and see if you’ve hit on something helpful.
• Schedule: Plan out your emails so your congregation isn’t inundated with different emails from different ministries at the same time.
• Mobile: Make sure your emails are mobile friendly: 65% Of All Email Gets Opened First on a Mobile Device.
• Sign Up: Don’t forget the sign up! How do people subscribe to your email list? Make sure it’s super simple.

A5. If you wouldn't open it and read it, other people won't either. #cmschat

— Suzanne Herr (@sherr206) May 22, 2015

Join the weekly #cmschat on Twitter every Thursday at 9 p.m. ET for more helpful insights.

More Tips:

• 37 Tips for Writing Emails That Get Opened, Read and Clicked
• 19 Quick Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing Subject Lines
• Is Your Pastor a Nigerian Prince? Church Email Newsletters for Beginners