A weekly email serves as a tool for your church to interject into your members’ lives and remind them what’s happening.
But beware: Mistakes abound in managing this valuable tool. If you have regular church email mistakes, you’ll lose subscribers quickly. It’s very difficult to get them back.
Here are five church email mistakes to avoid:
Mistake 1: Sending to everyone. Consider sending different emails to email groups. Segmenting based on demographics is shown to increase opening rates.
Why? Because you can hone the message directly to that group. And often your emails become shorter, which is a very good thing.
Mistake 2: Using the same subject lines. Spend time crafting a different, short and beneficial-
sounding subject line that’s connected to the email’s information.
If you can, use the recipient’s name in the subject line. This is easier when you build a list in an email management system like Mailchimp or Constant Contact. Many email campaign systems allow a placeholder that will be swapped with a name when it sends.
Mistake 3: Telling all the details. Do what it takes to raise awareness for key events and link to the details on your church website. But don’t put all the details in your email.
If your website is set up properly, they’ll discover other church events once you lead them online. Too many details make your emails too long.
Only give them promotional information that will make them interested enough to click on a website link.
The shorter your email is, the more people will read it.
Mistake 4: Having lots of paragraphs. Concentrate on subheads, bolded words, bullet points and links.
These eye interrupters will make your emails scannable, which respects the time of your audience.
A great email normally will be less than 150 words, avoids long paragraphs and ensures scannability so someone doesn’t have to read the entire email.
Mistake 5: Using hidden calls to action. Lead your reader to the “now what” referred to as a call to action.
The best emails have the fewest calls to action. The most read emails have one point and one call to action.
What if your church wants to have lots of email information? Beware of too many buried calls to action in the content.
Create sections
Instead, consider subheads in your email to create sections. Here’s an example:
“Mom? These events will connect you to other moms.”
Then have a listing of event links like Moms Night Out with dates and times. Each event title should be a link that connects to your website for more details.
Finally, at the end of each email, have one call to action such as “Check out more church events here.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — Mark MacDonald is communication pastor, speaker, consultant, bestselling author, church branding strategist for BeKnownforSomething.com and executive director of the Center for Church Communication, empowering 10,000-plus churches to become known for something relevant (a communication thread) throughout their ministries, websites and social media. His book, “Be Known for Something,” is available at BeKnownBook.com.
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