HELPING LEADERS BECOME
B E T T E R S T E WA R D S .
CHURCH COMMUNICATION
Tools Presented by: CallFire
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CHURCH EXECUTIVE • C H U R C H C O M M U N I C A T I O N T O O L S
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Table of Contents MOBILE MESSENGERS: HOW TO PLAN CHURCH EVENTS USING MOBILE MESSAGING 4 Planning and organizing an event for a large number of congregants introduces many variables. Dates, times and locations are all subject to change, often on short notice. For churches reliant on volunteers (and with limited financial resources), the need to quickly communicate schedule changes is even greater. Enter: mobile messaging. By Brooke Temple
HOW MESSAGING TECH CAN DRIVE FUNDRAISING EFFORTS
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Did you know that everyone with a mobile phone — even if it’s not a smart phone — has access to SMS (text) messaging? And, virtually everyone knows how to use it. If you want to communicate the same message to a large number of people, texting is your best bet. Since the technology is so pervasive, SMS is also a highly effective fundraising tool for churches, charities and non-profit organizations. By Brooke Temple
KEEPING YOUTH IN THE LOOP
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Millennials are exposed to a bewildering array of social, cultural and commercial influences, each one pulling them in a different direction. Average daily screen time among 18-to 24-year-olds is close to 10 hours, 61 percent of which is spent on desktop and mobile devices. How do you make a meaningful connection with a generation overwhelmed by choice? Where do community youth groups fit into the landscape of the so-called “digital native”? By Brooke Temple
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C H U R C H C O M M U N I C A T I O N T O O L S • CHURCH EXECUTIVE
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CHURCH COMMUNICATION TOOLS
MOBILE MESSENGERS How to plan church events using mobile messaging By Brooke Temple
Planning and organizing an event for a large number of congregants introduces many variables. Dates, times and locations are all subject to change, often on short notice.
Let’s say there is a congregational picnic planned at a local park. Inclement weather is forecast, and a last-minute venue change to the church’s multipurpose room is needed. A group SMS or voice broadcast prevents the ensuing chaos and inevitable decline in attendance.
For churches reliant on volunteers (and with limited financial resources), the need to quickly communicate schedule changes is even greater.
Building anticipation Schedule changes, cancellations, traffic and parking issues — for communicating urgent information to large numbers of congregants, SMS is more effective than any other means. But, mobile messaging can also play a key role in the early stages of event planning and promotion. MMS, SMS and voice broadcast are all well-suited to raising awareness about future church events and soliciting participation. Not only does the technology help you reach a wide audience, it encourages that audience to interact. Text message RSVPs give you a clearer understanding of how many people plan to attend, allowing coordinators to make refreshment and seating arrangements with greater accuracy. The benefits for budget-conscious event planners are obvious. At mere pennies per message, there is no more efficient communication tool.
Enter: mobile messaging. Mobile technology has made huge strides in the corporate world in recent years. But, the same qualities that make mobile communication perfect for businesses — affordability, reliability, scalability — are just as desirable (if not more so) for non-profit organizations. 3 types of mobile messaging 1. SMS — With SMS texting, you can communicate urgent information in a way that’s practically guaranteed to reach your audience. At least 95 percent of text messages are opened and read within minutes of receipt, easily making SMS the most effective way to quickly reach lots of people. 2. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) — MMS allows you to send more than just text; send images, audio files, video and more — all delivered to recipients in the same way as SMS messages. Events such as charity initiatives might be better communicated with words and images (like a virtual flier) which you can send using MMS. MMS is an attentiongrabber, well-suited to issuing that first announcement of an upcoming event in a way that will be remembered. 3. Voice Broadcast — Similar to SMS, customized voice broadcast messages can be sent to thousands of congregants simultaneously, but with the extra dimension of personalization that’s crucial to community outreach. Features like ‘Press 1’ allow recipients to transfer directly to a member of the organization, further enhancing the spirit of civic connectivity. Retire your phone tree and reach all congregants at once! ‘Goodwill maintenance’ Taken together, these three avenues of mobile communication can revitalize the dialogue between church and congregation. Planning can be more inclusive, and can minimize the chances of disgruntled parishioners showing up for an event only to find that it has been canceled. Sure, there is little backlash when a small group meeting is canceled due to circumstance. But when it happens again and again, such disappointments chip away at participation enthusiasm. And for volunteer-based organizations, enthusiasm is the main currency. The frustration for church leaders relying on word-of-mouth (or even mass emails, which reach only a fraction of their target audience on short notice) is that many of these events are easily rescheduled or relocated if attendees can be notified in a timely manner. 4
CHURCH EXECUTIVE • C H U R C H C O M M U N I C A T I O N T O O L S
Growing your congregation The advantages of mobile messaging go beyond event coordination. Group text messaging facilitates true involvement by congregants. SMS can be used to conduct polls and surveys to gather information on preferred music or popular sermons for an upcoming service. Clergy can send inspirational messages daily or weekly. It’s also an important tool for engaging young people — a huge task for churches in 2015. Teenagers now use SMS as their primary means of communication; any attempt to boost attendance figures among teens must look to mobile for real results. That voice and text are no longer viewed as strictly one-to-one platforms is perhaps the most significant development in mobile messaging in recent years. Young and old alike, people are used to receiving group messages from large organizations. In fact, they expect it. Brooke Temple is SVP of Strategic Partnerships for CallFire www.callfire.com in Santa Monica, CA. He has more than 16 years of business development and digital marketing experience, and heads up CallFire’s sales efforts and enterprise-level customer acquisition strategies.
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CHURCH COMMUNICATION TOOLS
How messaging tech can drive fundraising efforts
tailored to specific individuals or groups of individuals. The benefits of sending a thank you text go beyond mere courtesy; doing so will help you build on your existing relationship with donors. In addition to thanking donors, the follow-up message presents an opportunity to tell them how their donation was used. If, for example, you run an appeal to raise money to replace a broken stained glass window, include in the follow-up message a link to a photo gallery showing off the new work.
By Brooke Temple
Did you know that everyone with a mobile phone — even if it’s not a smart phone — has access to SMS (text) messaging? And, virtually everyone knows how to use it. If you want to communicate the same message to a large number of people, texting is your best bet. Since the technology is so pervasive, SMS is also a highly effective fundraising tool for churches, charities and non-profit organizations. According to The Human Rights Campaign, text message subscribers are 2.5 times more likely to donate than those who receive donation requests via other means. Organizations including the Red Cross and Salvation Army have used text-to-donate programs with great success, and churches are beginning to catch on to the benefits of SMS-driven fundraising campaigns. Here’s how to get the most out of your fundraising efforts.
Feedback Commensurate with the testing process, gathering direct feedback from congregants will help you identify which elements of the campaign are working, and which could use some improvement.
Relationships matter (a lot) Faith organizations rely on perennial community support to survive, and the importance of maintaining that support network can’t be overstated. Remember: recurring donors give more money than one-time givers, so the benefits of maintaining strong relationships with committed donors are calculable and significant. SMS messaging facilitates this network maintenance like no other technology. Text-to-donate isn’t the only way SMS messaging can be used to raise money. Attendance and engagement with traditional fundraising events and charity drives can be improved greatly by reaching out to congregants via text. Mobile tech analysts agree that SMS messages have a 95-percent open rate. SMS is a far more effective promotional tool than email, traditional mailings or phone trees. And, the more people you encourage to join your fundraising event, the more cash you’ll raise. The positive outcomes of a text-led fundraising campaign will be felt immediately — but it’s the long-term effects that will most benefit your organization. Although it can take a little time to grow your SMS contact database, the bigger it gets, the easier it will be to reach more people, as often as you need to. Good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth comes into play here, as congregants relay their experience of engaging with the organization via text to others. (And of course, the uses of SMS as a community communication tool aren’t limited to donating money and promoting fundraisers. Many aspects of running a faith-based organization — from announcing meetings to distributing inspirational messages — can be aided by text messaging.) SMS messaging is ingrained in the collective psyche; its power lies in its ubiquity. Practically everyone — of all ages — owns text-messaging technology. Once you start connecting with them, your contact list will grow … and so will your donation fund.
Follow-up Recognizing and thanking donors is a key part of the text-to-donate process. As with your initial call-to-action, the follow-up message can be
Brooke Temple is SVP of Strategic Partnerships for CallFire www.callfire.com in Santa Monica, CA. He has more than 16 years of business development and digital marketing experience, and heads up CallFire’s sales efforts and enterprise-level customer acquisition strategies.
Coordination A multi-channel fundraising campaign must be cohesive to be effective. With texting, you have complete control over the content and timing of each message; SMS can tie the narratives of each channel together. Personalization Subscribers are more likely to take action if you address them personally, so segment your lists and create different messages for each group based on their interests. Tailor your message differently for long- or short-term donors, and create an entirely new message for new supporters. Testing To ensure messages are clearly understood by recipients, testing your SMS campaign is of paramount importance. Marketing strategies used by corporations are just as effective for nonprofits, so use A/B testing — in which one variation of the message is tested against another — to see which combinations of content and timing (time of day and day of week to send your requests) are most effective.
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C H U R C H C O M M U N I C A T I O N T O O L S • CHURCH EXECUTIVE
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CHURCH COMMUNICATION TOOLS
Keeping youth in the loop By Brooke Temple
Millennials are exposed to a bewildering array of social, cultural and commercial influences, each one pulling them in a different direction. Average daily screen time among 18-to 24-year-olds is close to 10 hours, 61 percent of which is spent on desktop and mobile devices. And yet, despite spending all that time interacting with friends, watching videos, researching homework, consuming news media, shopping and countless other activities, a hefty portion of Millennials still describe a ‘fear of missing out’ on updates and events affecting their peer group. How do you make a meaningful connection with a generation overwhelmed by choice? Where do community youth groups fit into the landscape of the so-called “digital native”? Communicating with young people in a way that resonates —using technologies they instinctively understand — will ultimately benefit entire congregations. After all, smartphones have now eclipsed PCs as the primary point of web access for all demographics, and nobody predicts a reversal of the trend. Let’s look at a few ways in which mobile technology can enhance engagement with your youngest congregants: Conveying a clear message Entering a church for the first time should be a welcoming experience. Millennials don’t necessarily want to ask someone for information — they’re used to scoping out items of interest online. Indeed, 56% of practicing Christian Millennials conduct advance research on churches via the internet. A church website doesn’t have to be flashy. It should tell potential members — young and old — what it stands for, and provide a convenient sneak peek of the kinds of activities and sermons to expect. As we’ve noted, mobile web access now exceeds desktop; so, it’s essential that your website is mobile-friendly. Offering an authentic experience Millennials prefer authenticity over desperate attempts to appear hip and “relevant.” Remember, this generation has been subjected to non-stop advertising their entire lives; even their social spaces are infiltrated by commercial interests. If anyone knows when they’re being “marketed at,” it’s a Millennial — and it’s not what they’re looking for in a faith organization. Churches should provide respite from the onslaught of branded content, not feed into it. SMS messaging is ideal for a truly authentic mobile experience because it’s a standardized, text-only format for delivering personalized 6
CHURCH EXECUTIVE • C H U R C H C O M M U N I C A T I O N T O O L S
messages. To Millennials, this is old-school technology in the best possible sense: trustworthy, spam-free and easily accessible. Multimedia messaging (MMS) allows for more robust interaction through engaging visuals, audio or video messaging. Young congregants can get a creative reminder about an upcoming event, hear an inspirational message, see a full-color flyer on a Sunday service, or share a video of community service. The creativity goes beyond the text — but still to their smartphones — where they have a 95-percent open rate. Which brings us to… Being accessible Mobile apps and websites allow young people to consume and interpret information at their own pace and convenience. Your website should provide downloadable and streamable sermons or videos of recent events. It should also make it easy for potential members to register and donate; 20 percent of Christian Millennials have contributed to charities via SMS, and text-to-donate is fast becoming the most effective fundraising method. Providing mentorship Compared with previous generations, Millennials don’t feel the same sense of obligation about attending church. Mentorship is more important than ever if you want to keep young people involved in the community. According to Barna research, young adults who remain involved with their local church beyond their teens are twice as likely to have a close personal friendship with an older member of the community (who isn’t a pastor or minister). Text messaging and other forms of digital communication help facilitate these vital relationships, especially for more socially reticent congregants. It’s also mutually beneficial: older members of the community can learn a great deal about the nuances of navigating the digital world from Millennials. Effective inter-generational communication is essential for the future of faith organizations, and mobile technology allows it to happen in a way that young people understand — and older members can learn from. Mobile technology is enabling young people to engage with their local faith organizations in the same ways that they engage with friends. They might not go to church every week; however, just as they maintain social relationships largely online, they can do the same with their faith. This flexibility is critical for long-term engagement. By giving young people the freedom to decide when to skirt the edges of a church experience, and when to get deeply involved, you take the pressure off not just the individual but your staff and volunteers, too. Instead of their future engagement hinging on one experience inside a church, Millennials can get a feel for the culture in a piecemeal fashion. Brooke Temple is SVP of Strategic Partnerships for CallFire www.callfire.com in Santa Monica, CA. He has more than 16 years of business development and digital marketing experience, and heads up CallFire’s sales efforts and enterprise-level customer acquisition strategies. churchexecutive.com