Contrary to what majority of you think, email marketing isn't always have to be just about "selling" something and it isn't just for businesses. It is also a way of getting in touch with your audience, thus a church can significantly benefit from utilizing this tool.
Email newsletter is an excellent format that allows you to be in constant communication with your congregation as well as a way of directing traffic to your website.
Most of your congregation may not "initiate" going to your website unless you give them reasons to (i.e register for an event, download sermons, etc). So for those who do not often visit your website, email newsletter is a great way to keep them informed of any upcoming events and activities in your church. This is also a great way to send them inspirational quotes, teaching tidbits, and many more.
If your church is already taking advantage of the power of email newsletter, then great! If not, keep reading for tips on how to get started!
1. Start with building your opt-in list.
Before sending out a newsletter, it's important to have an email list of people who opted to receive your newsletter. Otherwise, you could be violating the SPAM CAN law.
With the rising issues in spam, email users are becoming more and more informed and aware of the tools in their email clients on how to combat junk emails so it is important to strictly send the newsletter only to those who are willing recipients of your news and updates.
You can build a list by announcing to your congregation that your church is launching a newsletter. You can make them sign up by:
a. Passing out a form to opt-in and drop the form in the offering bucket.
b. Going to the website to subscribe. (You must have a sign-up form on your website.)
2. Search for an Email Marketing Tool.
There are several ways through which you can send your email newsletter out. Some churches simply use Outlook to send out email newsletter.
This may be cost-effective and perhaps advisable if your list is very small, however, as your list grows bigger, you will need a platform that allows you to send in bulk without your IP being blacklisted by Internet Service Providers (ISP).
If you opt to use an email marketing service, you are able to send in bulk without concerns of being blacklisted because these services have their own email servers that have IP already recognized by ISPs.
A quick look-up in Google for "email marketing" gave me a couple promising services:
1. www.icontact.com
2. www.constantcontact.com
I have also heard of www.mailchimp.com.
Since I have not personally tried these services, I cannot rave or rant about any of it yet. However, I heard some churches use them. Each one of them also offers a free trial so you can test drive it and see how it works for you. (If you are using one of these services or have tried any of them, please feel free to post comments as far as your experience.)
The only email marketing platform that I could vouch for is the ExiMail , which is our own email marketing service. What I really like about this service is that it gives me statistic reports: Who clicked on what, how many of the recipients opened, how many unsubscribed, how many marked it spam, and so on and so forth.
Unlike other email marketing services that charges you a monthly fee, ExiMailonly charges you $10.00 delivery fee and $.02 per recipient. It means that if you don't use the service for a certain month or certain period of time, it's not drawing money from the church's financial resources. For more information on ExiMail, our email newsletter service, please click here .
In our next newsletter/blog, we will give you some tips/ideas on what to put on your newsletter and how to make it interesting and attractive. Stay tuned!
