If you are a pastor or administrator, you must be wondering why your church needs an email list.
Several other pastors are in your shoes. One thing that you must know is that an email list is essential to your email marketing. Just so you know, email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing methods.
Emails are very popular for several reasons. Firstly, they are easy to send because of several automation software like ChurchPad. Another reason is that most people read their emails via their smartphones. This is a significant contributor to the very high open rate of emails.
In this post, we will explain five reasons why your church needs an email list. Ready? Let’s get started.
What is an email list?
Before we dive into why you need an email list, let’s quickly explain what it is. It is sometimes referred to as an electronic mailing list. Simply put, it is a collection or catalog of email addresses. These email addresses could be from potential customers of a business, and in this case, church congregants.
There are several ways to grow your email list. Once you can grow yours, then you can use it to your church’s advantage. In the next section, we will show you why your church needs an email list.
Why your church needs an email list
When you genuinely understand how email marketing works, you will see a million reasons why an email list is essential. This section will show you five of the common reasons why churches should have email lists.
To keep your church members engaged
Proper congregation management requires your church to interface with its congregants beyond services. An excellent way to reach out to your church members outside the church building’s four walls is via email.
Engaging with your members involves sending all kinds of messages. You can send periodic messages to check on those that didn’t make it to church. Another thing you can do is to send your members essential points from the sermon after each service. You can get creative with your content since there is no limit to what you can send.
How can you send these emails without an email list? Exactly, you need one to do this. One thing that you must be wary of is sending too many emails. Overburdening your members with so many emails will affect your email open rate.
Targeted Messages
There are certain messages that you need to a specific section of your congregation. For example, if there are special women’s prayer meetings, there’s no need to send a reminder to men. All you need to do is to send the messages to the women in your congregation. The same goes for when you have to send sermon summaries to congregants that couldn’t make it down to the church.
Guess what can help you send these targeted messages more effectively, your email list. When you properly segment your email list, it is easier to send such messages. The good news is that you can fully express the message via emails than almost every other medium. Emails allow you to send all the details you need to since you can send a variety of media.
It is imperative to be careful of the details that you provide in your emails. A good email marketing practice is to lead people to take a certain action. As such, you need just enough details to do this. By the way, when the email is too lengthy, people will hardly read through. This means that they will miss some details in the end, amounting to a waste of time and effort for you.
Improved publicity planning
Even though churches neglect this a lot, it is important to plan your digital outreaches. It is not enough to put all your effort into planning programs. You must also invest some time and effort in publicizing such programs.
An email list is usually segmented, giving a clear picture of different sections of your congregation. This helps you to plan your publicity campaigns with a lot more ease. For example, you know how many people need to receive certain emails for a couples’ date night in church. As such, you can plan the emails ahead of time and use an automated system like ChurchPad to send them.
Easy dissemination of information
In these days where social distancing has become the new normal, not everyone is comfortable coming to church. Even if they wanted to, the regulations require just a percentage of your regular congregation to attend physical services. This means that everyone else has to enjoy the service via Livestream.
People watching from home may never pay attention to the announcements. Even those present in a church may sometimes not listen to announcements. The question that begs an answer is, “how do you convey information to members of your congregation?”
While there are several methods like texting and social media, emails still top the charts to elaborate information dissemination. This is where having an email list comes in handy. You can simply load the emails to the emailing software and send your messages. The benefit of this is that you can pass clearer messages to a broad audience with ease. More than anything else, you are sure that they will receive and read these messages.
Affordability
If your church has been printing newsletters to distribute to the congregation, you must be weighed down with the cost. A lot of funds go into printing newsletters. In the end, most people end up not reading through them. That’s equivalent to a waste of funds, resources, and effort.
With an email list, you easily send your newsletters digitally. This will help you cut down on the amount you spend on printing. Several email marketing software provides free services to organizations with small lists. Even if your email list is extensive, you will end up spending a tiny fraction of what you spend on printing.
Conclusion
There you have it for the reasons why you need an email list at your church. As we mentioned earlier, you can take advantage of the email features on ChurchPad to boost your email campaigns. Do you have any questions? Drop them in the comments section.
