Church Marketing Emails People will Actually Read
Ever feel like no one is reading your church’s email newsletter?
You’re probably right, there’s a good chance most people aren’t.
According to marketing email company Mailmunch, church emails are opened by only 27.62% of recipients, on average. So for every 10 recipients, not even 3 people are opening your email, much less actually reading it and thinking about what you’ve written.
It’s not just churches. Email open rates are bad across the board, no matter who is sending them. For businesses in the marketplace, their average email open rate is just 17%.
The reason is simple: We are all getting way, way too many emails.
The average office worker receives 121 emails per day! Who on earth has the time (or desire) to read every single one?
Our email inbox is like this every day. But unlike Harry, we’re not happy about it. And none of them are inviting us to Hogwarts.
So don’t take it personally that your church congregants aren’t opening your church newsletter email. They’re just overwhelmed.
But the good news is that the data shows there are a few things that churches can do to dramatically increase how many people open their emails. We’re going to do it by respecting our people’s time and attention.
I’ve seen this work BIG TIME.
In 2019 at Arrowhead Church in Morristown, we made all the changes I’m going to recommend in this article. At the time, our open rates were between 30%-40%. Today, our open rates are between 55% - 80%!
Imagine going from 3 out of 10 reading your emails to 8 out of 10 - these tactics legitimately work.
It’ll require a little bit more thoughtfulness from you but the benefits are worth it.
1. Target your Audience
The Problem
In the summer of 2021, I was on my first sabbatical and during that time, my family visited a few churches in Knoxville. We went to each church exactly once, never filled out a “connect card,” but we did check our kids into to their children’s ministries. It’s been 3 years and to this day, I am getting email newsletters from these churches about whatever new sermon series, mission trip, group launch, Christmas event, or youth retreat they’re doing. All from a church I attended once (and notably, did not ask them to email me updates).
I’m a pastor and I like these churches, but it was annoying! What did these churches gain by emailing me all that stuff that didn’t pertain to me whatsoever? Not a thing, but now I have a little bit of annoyance when I think of them, which is what we might call, “bad marketing.”
Many churches do this. They gather data about visitors and add people into an ever-growing and ENORMOUS database. Then the worst offenders email that entire database for every church announcement.
The thing is, even if it’s your own church, not every announcement relates to you. I dearly love Arrowhead Church, but if I got an email about every college ministry event they do, it would be annoying and I’d stop reading the emails.
The Solution
You can see the recipient list was “Active Kids Parents,” and it was opened by 65% of the recipients. Pretty great!
The solution is to target specific people for every email. Rather than email your entire database about every little thing, target who gets what information. Think of these scenarios:
Who should get an email about an upcoming youth retreat? Parents of youth, the students, and the youth volunteers.
Who gets an email about a church member meeting? The church members.
Who should receive an email about a new senior adult group? Senior adults.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? As the recipient, you’re only getting the information that you actually might be interested in.
A natural follow-up question might be, “When is it appropriate to email the entire list?” For Arrowhead Church, I have given the following recommendations to our leaders:
Never email someone who hasn’t had more than one “Digital Touch” with our church in more than 12 months.
A “Digital Touch” is any kind of interaction that we have in our database. That could be checking-in a child, giving, attending an event, joining a group, volunteering- anything that could serve as an automatic, digital record of their continued engagement.
I say “more than one” because if a guest comes and checks in their kid one time in an entire year, that’s not engagement. That’s a one time visitor.
Plan to email the whole list no more than 4 times a year. So think Christmas, Easter, and maybe two more really big, church-wide announcements.
How do we do this?
An example of our automated lists in PCO’s People app. You can see some of our lists and that they were updated by the system 10 hours ago.
At Arrowhead Church, we use Planning Center Online (PCO) as our ChMS. Within PCO’s People app, we have built several lists that automatically update every single day (and “active” means more than once in 12 months). Some of these lists include:
Active Kids Parents
Active Youth Parents
Active Group Members
Active Donors
Active Volunteers
Current Church Partners
Church-Wide Active Adults
Planning Center updates those lists of people every day, based on the rules we wrote for them. Then, PCO automatically syncs to MailChimp and whatever the list’s name, that becomes a tag in Mailchimp. We’ve also added tags such as “men” and “women.”
When we build an email in MailChimp, we are choosing a mixture of those tags for our recipients. For example, if we had a new “Mom’s Day Out” event, we’ll send that email to recipients who have both of the following tags:
Active Kids Parents
Women
2. One Email, One Topic
You might already think I’m insane, just after that first point. But this one is even wilder.
Once you target emails to specific recipients, another tactic comes into play: For every email you send, there should be only one announcement.
The Arrowhead Church 2020 email design guidelines, which are built on the idea that each email is just about one topic.
I know. It’s extreme.
You’re asking, “But Jared, we’ve published our weekly church newsletter for 30 years! How will people know all the different opportunities at the church?”
Here’s what the data tells us: Newsletter emails, on average, get less than half the opens of a single topic email. Industry-wide, we’re talking 10% of newsletter emails getting opened by the recipients.
People don’t want to have to sift through a ton of information that may or may not be relevant to them. They have 120 other emails to attend to!
So we’re not going to send newsletters.
Each email we send will have just one single topic. And because you’re targeting your emails into segments, people are getting only the information they need.
That means if I get an email from the church, it’s much more likely that it pertains to me and I don’t have to scroll and read a whole bunch of irrelevant information. I can read a short email about just one thing that I’m likely interested in.
Think about the following announcements that might have been in a newsletter and imagine who in your church might actually want to know each one:
Groups sign-ups are open
Training for the security team is October 14
Easter is March 31 and there are 3 services
The Smith’s had their baby and need meals
Men’s workday at the church this Saturday
Annual report for donors
College mission trip sign-up
If you’re new here, check out growth track
Out of 8 announcements, an individual might only need to know about 1 of them.
Pairing segmented audiences with one-topic-per-email makes the relevant information so much easier for a person to find. You’ve done the filtering for them. You’ve taken all the announcements that might show up in a newsletter and sent each piece to the exact people who might want to know.
Yes, it requires a little more work from your staff and more thoughtfulness, but not only is this respecting your congregant’s time, it’s going to get you more engagement. People will be far more likely to read an email if they think it really does pertain to them.
3. Write Compelling Subject Lines
A subject is really the only way a recipient knows if the email will be something of interest to them. It’s all you have to grab their attention. So while doing the first two steps in this article are helpful, it all comes together with the subject line.
Now that you’re targeting your audience and your emails have just one topic, writing a subject isn’t too difficult. Your subject can really just say what the topic is! But there are a few additional tips that will help:
Personalize the subject line. If you’re using a tool like MailChimp, you can automatically add in the recipient’s first name into the subject. The data shows this can increase open rates by up to 75%. That reads like this:
“Hey Alex, Believe Groups are starting back!”
“Guess what, Michelle? We’re doing a ladies retreat!”
Use action language. Start with verbs that inspire action, making it clear what the reader can do or learn. Phrases like "Discover," "Learn," "Join," or "Get" set the stage for what to expect.
Keep your subject lines short and to the point. A concise subject line that clearly communicates the email's value or content is more likely to grab attention. Aim for 50 characters or less to ensure your message is fully visible on mobile devices.
Using words typically associate with charity, such as “donate,” “fundraise,” and “charity” actually negatively impact email opens, to no one’s surprise. However, if you are trying to fundraise over email, use impact-related words, such as “help,” or “build,” or “provide.” In other words, lead with the results that could come about because of someone’s gift.
Using the phrase “Thank you” actually dramatically raises open rates. They’re curious to know what they’re being thanked for! For example:
“Thank you for making 2023 VBS the biggest yet”
Ask a question in your subject line
“What made King David a man after God’s own heart?”
Wrap-Up
In essence, transforming your church's email marketing strategy from a broad, one-size-fits-all approach to a targeted, single-topic communication can significantly increase engagement and reduce annoyance among your congregation. By respecting the individual interests and time of your members, you're not just sending out emails; you're fostering a more personalized and meaningful connection.
Personalization, segmentation, and compelling subject lines are your best tools in this endeavor. This method might require a bit more effort and thoughtfulness on your part, but the benefits of higher open rates and engaged recipients are well worth it.
You have information people need to know about. Let's make every email count, focusing on relevance and respect for our congregants' inboxes, and watch as our community becomes more connected and informed than ever before.
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