Many planters are using a mass email solution (e.g. Constant Contact) to send out prayer and fundraising newsletters to their supporters. Established churches should be doing something like that to communicate with congregants and acquaintances.
Here’s something we can learn from a company that uses advanced online and email marketing strategies: their newsletter contains some compelling headline and interesting image, but you have to click through to their site to see what the deal is:
There are several advantages to churches that I can see:
- Time Savings: Now you don’t have to blog and write a newsletter. Just write the blog and then copy & paste the first two lines or so into your email newsletter with a link back to your site. Try cutting off one of the sentences with a ‘…’ so they’ll naturally want to finish the thought
- Increased Search Engine Ranking: the more you blog, the higher your website will appear in the organic results when someone searches on the internet
- Regular Site Traffic: your readers will become accustomed to frequenting your site and may even join the conversation in your blog comments
- Tracking: most services that send out mass emails will be able to tell you how many email recipients clicked through back to your site. Even if they don’t, you can always set up a special landing page that the public can’t see and can only be accessed through the newsletter link. Either way, you’ll be able to refine what and when you write by learning from your results & reports
- Increased Delivery: now follow me on this one… If someone sends you a lengthy email and you’re just trying to get through all the emails in your inbox, don’t you ‘file’ it and try to come back to it later? How many of those do we actually get back to? By keeping it short and sweet, you can deliver the main idea very quickly. And if you write a compelling hook, they may take a quick inbox time-out to click through to your site and read more. I don’t have any proof, just a hunch that this will be a side benefit
Here’s to increased communication!
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Tags: 1 Comment
Just discovered you blog today – well done!
All your “advantage points” for churches above are bang on. To your last point, the “hook” you put on your newsletter is increasingly becoming more and more important. Churches need to write the most compelling “subject” title to an e-mail possible to get it opened in the first place. Then, keeping your content short and sweet with summaries that drive traffic to the church blog or web site are key. The challenge is to find some call to action that will be so compelling that people will want to act immediately.
I have found one way to engage people with e-newsletters for churches is to include links to pictures – people love pictures. Make sure someone is always taking pictures at your events, post them online, and then link to them in the e-newsletter. It builds stronger community.
Keep up the good work with this blog – you are helping churches communicate with excellence.