By Jonathan Howe
In addition to a weekly bulletin, churches have often used weekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletters to better communicate with guests and members. As costs to produce newsletters have increased and budget funds designated for them have decreased, they have all but vanished from churches. Instead of replacing them with digital versions, many churches abandoned the practice altogether.
In doing so, another problem was created: bulletins and announcement times became overcrowded. The result was not better communication, but too much being communicated and less information being retained.
So instead of relying on a weekly bulletin or a brief 2-minute announcement time in the service, consider using an email newsletter to more effectively communicate with guests and members. Here are eight reasons your church should have an email newsletter.
- Email Newsletters Inform All Church Members, Not Just That Week’s Attendees — If you don’t make it to the worship service, you don’t hear the announcements. Because of the decline in the frequency of attendance, many church members are unaware of events or happenings at their church. Email newsletters allow you communicate to everyone at once.
- Email Is the Commonly Accepted Way for Organizations to Communicate — We receive emails from dozens of companies every week. Whether it’s a sale notice from our favorite online shop, an email about work, or a notification from a social network, we are used to getting emails and scanning them for important information. A church email newsletter is easy to scan for important information just like the hundreds of other emails we receive each week.
- Email Newsletters Allow for Comprehensive Information — If you were to get a separate email for each activity or ministry in the church, it would be way too much. One simple newsletter that covers all the ministries of the church is much easier to digest for church members than individual emails. Some age-level ministries may need their own newsletters, but not every ministry a church has needs a separate email.
- Digital Newsletters Are Cheaper and More Effective Than Print — As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, high production costs are one reason print newsletters died. Minimal production costs are one of the main benefits of digital newsletters. Many providers offer free email newsletter services for small lists. For bigger lists, even a paid service would cost just pennies on the dollar compared to a printed newsletter.
- Email Allows Immediate Action — This might be the most important reason to have an email newsletter for your church. With one click, members or guests can take action. Whether that’s signing up for a class or volunteering, registering for an event, or giving to a special offering, email offers the recipient the opportunity to act immediately without having to remember to do so later—like a bulletin or announcement in the service.
- Analytics Track What Gets Attention — This is related to the previous point. As the sender of the email, you can see what is of interest to those who read it. That can help you know where to place important information or what to include (or exclude) in future newsletters.
- Increased Awareness of Online Giving Increases Stewardship — If your church has online giving, reminding your members about that option in your weekly newsletter is a must. For those who may be traveling, a small button with the option for giving electronically may be the difference in giving or not giving their tithes and offerings.
- Included Devotionals Aid in Personal Discipleship — Finally, email newsletters should be used as a devotional aid of some kind. You can easily include devotionals, prayer requests, or daily Bible readings for use throughout the week.
If you are looking to start an email newsletter, MailChimp would be my suggested provider. And always remember to ask for permission (also known as “opt-in”) before adding someone to an email list.
Does your church have an email newsletter? If so, what benefits have you seen from it?
About the analytics – our church was wondering why such a low percentage of people were opening our email newsletter. Through some investigating and experimenting, we found out that 38% of the people who got the newsletter read it in the preview pane without opening it. With some services, that can skew your numbers if you’re following them.
Be sure to use a good headline as well. Not just “Church Newsletter”
Thanks Thom,
Can you throw out 1 – 3 bulk email servers that allow for professional looking newsletters and useful analytics? Maybe also with scheduling options.
David, as I mentioned at the end of the post, MailChimp is a great tool. Others may use AWeber or Constant Contact or Emma.
Vertical Response has an option for non-profits that can get some smaller churches started for free. Used them in the past. Always improving their product.
Another benefit is that bad weather cancellations can be immediately and efficiently done from home!
Those emails get forwarded to other people as well.
Also, they are good because they will have the service schedule for the next week or two or three. If you have the same 10 am service every Sunday, this might not matter. However, in liturgical churches (and especially around holidays) there may be a combination of different rites of high mass, solemn mass, low mass, (and sometimes multiple foreign language masses), and morning prayer at different times on Sundays and daily masses as well. Anglican (Episcopal) Evensong is not always conducted every Sunday but when it is, people from other churches and denominations will attend who may have gotten the email.
Great points.
Curious if there is a fee for MailChimp and what is the difference between services like that and simply using only gmail? Thx.
MailChimp costs for some services, but we use them for quite a bit of emailing (newsletters, welcome letters, etc.) and do it for free.
I see the benefits of an email newsletter, as I see a number of the hardcopies we now print going to waste each month. However, our church has a number of elderly members who do not receive email, and they get very upset if information goes out via email, and they don’t know about it. What do you suggest for this situation?
Good point about those who aren’t online. Perhaps a few printed copies of the email could be placed in the foyer. Shut-ins could be mailed or taken their copies.
Exactly.
Jonathan, I wonder if you could somehow give a few examples of a good church newsletter. After reading the blog post and thinking, “that is a good idea!” my next thought was, “what would a good one look like?”
It’s hard to say, Fred. I don’t get too many. Maybe some commenters can share links to theirs.
I don’t know if ours is “good” but here is a link to it if you’d like to see how a published newsletter from MailChimp looks http://us10.campaign-archive1.com/?u=8d63800b9701dd960f4d3031a&id=82d7b83edd&e=691389f6cf
Thought provoking article. I can see pros and cons to both ‘snail’ mail and email versions of a newsletter. As a possible solution, how about giving members an option? Instead of just bombarding the entire congregation, have the newsletter be ‘by subscription’ where they can choose which version they receive.
Always a possibility.
Mailchimp also integrates well with social media. A webpage version is created for each issue so that you can share on twitter, Facebook, etc… Also an e-newsletter can offer an easy way for the church to gather contact information both through the newsletter itself and through your greeting team. We have greeters introduce themselves to new guests and ask if they would like to have a copy of our newsletter… Then we ask for their name and cell number and immediately text them the link. Now we have a cell number and name. Even if they don’t click on the prompt in the newsletter to give us info at least we can text them later and ask for an email address so they can receive the newsletter each week automatically.
Example: http://eepurl.com/bNyZGT
You will be more likely to get their email address than their mobile number. In the cities, people’s private mobile numbers are sometimes held closely because they really aren’t changeable without a lot of fuss.
Mailchimp is definitely a great provider and you can also set up sub lists within it for more targeted emails. The scheduling function is also great for preparing emails in advance.
We use ours to focus in on the previous Sunday’s teaching, providing video summaries plus links to a variety of resources for people to dig in a bit deeper to the teaching…with the aim that our teAching on Sunday feeds into the rest of the week. We also include announcements and links to the some of the worship we use. Here’s an example…
http://eepurl.com/bMpEXn
Grace and peace
Dave
Dave,
How long does this email take whoever’s job it is to create? This seems like a full day’s work at least. It’s great for sure.
We’ve been using mail chimp over a printed monthly magazine type for about a year, it’s been a good transition! We love the analytics and the accessibility from anywhere. We try our best not to spam those who signed up, making sure to publish no more than 2x a month at a maximum. The occasional short notice mass congregation announcements have been well recieved and opened when we’ve need to get the word out for something! Especially an unexpected venue change this Sunday :). If you’re hesitant/unsure/not tech savvy, it’s still worth it to give it a try or maybe even recruit a younger church goer who can navigate online programs!
Hey Jonathan,
Thanks for your insights & expertise in the arena of media & technology. One question I have is, would you recommend still doing an email newsletter if a church uses a church management software that already communicates to people, for instance, The City? Our church leaders discussed doing an email newsletter, but came to the conclusion that what new information would we provide, that we couldn’t already post within The City. Would love any thoughts you or anyone else have in this regard. Thank you.
For more on The City: http://www.acstechnologies.com/products/the-city
It really depends on how engaged people are with The City or any other ChMS. No matter how much you try, you’re not going to have full buy-in, so I think the newsletter is still helpful. Especially for those on the fringes or for guests.
We also find open rates between 30-40%. Would you still say this is the best way to go? If so, how often would recommend sending out the newsletter?
What was your open rate with a printed newsletter? Who knows?
Always a favorite.
I have just begun to offer our monthly newsletter via email. I put out a form so people could choose which (or both) form they desire. I was a bit taken aback by how many people prefer the hard copy. I was hoping to save some money on printing costs. I guess a mostly older congregation is very resistant to technology.