Email marketing for churches is one of the best ways to keep in touch with your congregation throughout the week.
But more than that, it’s also a fantastic way to grow engagement and grow your community. Best of all, it’s an incredibly easy (and cheap) church marketing strategy to get started.
This quick guide will give you just a few tips on how to maximize the benefit of your church’s email marketing strategy. But first, let’s take just a moment to answer the question, “Do we really even need email marketing?”
Why Does Your Church Need Email Marketing?
Successfully running and growing a church takes more than just spreading your life-giving message.
It takes more than giving back to your community.
And it takes more than being a pillar of morality and hope.
Instead, you also need to keep your congregation informed, engaged, and inspired outside of your church walls. After all, what good is the church if your message disappears right when your flock walks out your front doors on Sunday?
So, how do you keep in touch with your members Monday through Saturday? How do you keep them thinking about the good word all week long? And how do you expand attendance rates, membership numbers, and congregation engagement in activities?
That’s exactly where email marketing for churches comes in.
Email marketing gives you a direct line to your congregation members. While blogs, social media posts, and pay-per-click advertisements may be informative and attractive, there’s really no guarantee that they’re going to actually get in front of the eyes of who you want.
But with email marketing, you can rest easy knowing your message got delivered. Now, whether or not the recipient actually opened that email is another story (but that’s what the tips coming up later are for).
A Few Statistics to Consider
You may be thinking, “Alright, that all makes sense. But what about the hard data?”
If that sounds about right, then this section is for you.
Below, you’ll find a list of stats that show why exactly you and your organization need to invest in the power of email marketing for your church.
- According to Constant Contact, religious organizations have the highest open rates for emails (28%) out of any other industry (total avg. of 16%). Beyond that, emails from churches have a 2% higher click-through rate compared to the average (11% vs 6%) and a 2% lower bounce rate than the average (9% vs 11%).
- 47% of marketers rate email marketing as the most effective marketing channel. That’s compared to 39% for social media, 33% for SEO, and 33% for content marketing (Smart Insights and GetResponse).
- Campaign Monitor reports that email marketing has a reported return on investment of $42 for every $1 spent (that’s a 4,200% return)!
- 21% of sent emails are opened within the first hour of delivery (GetResponse).
- Email is 40% better at converting compared to Facebook and Twitter, reports The Annuitas Group.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Email Campaigns
Below is a list of just a few tips that’ll help your email marketing campaigns bring in better open rates, higher click-through rates, and better engagement from your congregation.
- Make Asking for Email Addresses a Routine – It’s incredibly easy to start incorporating this right into your routine. You can ask for email addresses at volunteer or church events, create donation slips with contact info attached, or even just ask for it outright while greeting your members one by one.
- Keep It Consistent – The more consistent your emails will be, the more likely your readers will be to open them. Try to make sending out multiple emails each week a habit. You want to be careful about not over emailing your members though as that can lead to them getting annoyed and even unsubscribing.
- Don’t Drag Things Out – Piggybacking off the last point, you also don’t want to bore your readers. Instead, keep your information succinct and relevant. Use bullet points and headers to make it even easier for your readers to get the information they want from your email. And always assume your readers are going to be skimming, so try to make your email easy to navigate.
- Always Include CTAs – This is one of the most common problems for a lot of email marketing for churches. Be sure to include bold, clear call-to-actions (CTAs) within your email. Send them to your social links and ask for a like. Tell them to share your info with a friend. Ask them to confirm their attendance to your next event. No matter what the CTA is, you need to be sure to actually ask.
- Use Emails to Keep Members Updated – Email newsletters are a great way to keep your members up to date on the current happenings for your church. Have a volunteer event coming up? Or a bible study group? Or even just this week’s mass times? Include it in your emails. But try to vary up the content too. Be sure to include a few fun topics (introduction to new members, inspirational passages, etc.) so that it’s not all boring calendar stuff.
- Test Different Headline Styles – Your subject line is one of the most important parts of your email. So if you can, try to test out different variations throughout your email campaigns. A lot of bulk email software will actually let you A/B test your subject lines to see which ones work best with your audience. But if you’d rather stick to cheaper (or even free) options like Gmail, just keep an eye on your open rates and subject line types that work well.
- Automate If You Can – Last but not least, try to automate your email campaigns by scheduling them ahead of time. Paid software solutions offer a variety of options on how to do so. But scheduling is also usually available in free options as well. In the end, you want to try to cut down on your workload as much as possible so you can focus on other efforts for your church.
How Can Epic Life Creative Help?
Email marketing for churches can be one of the most beneficial church marketing strategies out there. The only trick is, you have to be able to do it right.
Now, if you want the most out of your email marketing, Epic Life Creative is here to help. We serve churches just like yours to improve their digital and print marketing through design, copywriting, web development, and branding expertise.
And at the same time, we want to make it easier for you to grow your congregation, engage your community, and ensure you’re able to spread your life-giving message to as many people as possible.
To learn more, just click below to connect with us today.
