Direct Mail - turning that postcard into an effective marketing tool

At Open Arms Community Church, we've done several direct mail campaigns, and seen it as a pretty successful way of attracting people to our church. For about 6K, we sent a custom designed postcard to every household within a 30 mile radius, advertising an upcoming series. We often get about a 1 percent return on that investment, meaning if we sent out 30,000 mailers, over the next couple months, about 300 new people wandered in to our church. That's a pretty good investment, but it may not be effective in every part of the country. Some people respond to the postcards as "junk mail", some people throw them away. There are a number of things I've seen that work well to make your direct mail campaign effective in getting a return. 1. Coordinate - Schedule your mailing with a 4-6 week sermon series. The timing is everything, If you send out your mailer too early, people will forget about it, too late, and delays at the postal service could make the mailer hit mailboxes too late. Bulk rate postage does not guarantee delivery, and around holidays especially, the mailers often get hung up waiting for processing. Try to send them out to hit 7 - 10 days before your event, but no sooner. It helps if your sermon series is one that people can come in at any point, and it makes sense. Doing several weeks of the series allows people to take a couple weeks to make up their mind. If you advertise a one week event, you only have ONE shot for it to work. Advertising a longer event gives people more time to consider your advertisement. It gives them the illusion of choice. "Well, if I miss this week, I haven't missed everything, I can go next week." That's not a bad thing. You just want to get them in the door, so you have an opportunity to reach them. 2. Quadruple Check Your Design and Information You don't want to have 30K mailers going out with misinformation. Be sure to check it yourself several times, and have a team of people check it twice each. 3. Save money on a pre-printed campaign Outreach.com has some great sermon series packages that you can take advantage of for a reasonable rate. They'll even customize some of them for your unique area. 4. Felt Needs - Don't try to market a deep theological concept, or a study on Revelation. Put yourself in the position of the unchurched in your community. In fact, find a few of them and ask them some questions! Find out what their biggest felt needs are, and custom make a series on that.... examples: relationships, sex, parenting, getting life under control, money management, answers to your deepest questions, etc. PS... if you market these series, make sure that the messages you preach are accessible to your people when come to your church. If they don't connect, they won't come back. 5. Go Pro Don't design your postcard with Publisher, cheap clip art, or anything that says - we're too cheap to pay for this. If you have a young, fresh, and artistic designer at your church, utilize him (her). OR pay for a professionally designed campaign. (Check ouy our OpenArms.tv/Solutions page if you want to purchase a custom campaign! There are a ton of great designers out there that specialize in church marketing that can help you out for a reasonable price. 6. Target - Sending out 30-100 thousand mailers may be a little more expensive for you. It's definitely a "blanket" approach. You may want to aim a little closer to your target. Your congregation already has a social network of friends that they've been trying to reach for Christ. Ask for their help. Have them send you a list of five to ten people that they want to send a postcard too. OR, print out a couple hundred postcards yourself, put stamps on them, leave the address field blank, and have your congregation fill them out and drop them in the mail. This couples your marketing with their word of mouth, which is the most effective form of advertising anyway. 7. Multiple Impressions - Don't use just direct mail. Send Press Releases to the local news outlets. Advertise on social media websites like myspace, or local online bulletin boards. Hang flyers across town, and other cheap or free ways to promote your event. Mutli-faceted marketing is the most effective way to reach out. 8. Be Prepared - Our largest marketing campaign was not very successful. Well, the marketing worked, but we were not prepared. We advertised a sermon series titled: Wounded - Healing Your Deepest Hurts. We used a multifaceted campaign, and sent out more mailers than we had ever done before. First of all, the topic was very deep, and I think part of the reason people didn't stick around, is that they saw that emotional healing is a deep and painful thing, and they may not have been ready for it. But we had hundreds of people visit our church during that month. Only a few stuck around. Why? We did not have any systems in place to track them, contact them, and "assimilate" them into our church body. There was no way to identify who came to visit, how to contact them, how to get them plugged into a cell group, or how to attach them to the rest of the congregation. So they came, they liked it, they came back a couple times, but then they disappeared, and we had no way of really knowing who they were, or contacting them to help them get connected. Make sure you work on implementing church systems, so that people can connect with your church. Systems to turn them from First Time Guest to Fully Devoted Followers of Christ.

Evangelism is not Marketing

I've been studying and learning from church planters and church growth experts for a little while now, and I've seen a trend that I find a bit disturbing. Often, churches will divert a portion of their budget toward evangelism, but the money is spent on marketing. I've got no problem with a church spending money on marketing, and I think it's a great thing to do. I also think it's an easy mistake to make, because church marketing is evangelistic in nature, but it's not evangelism. Attractional vs. Missional Churches operating under an "attractional" model often fall into this pattern. The attractional model tends to live by the motto: Come check us out. You can meet God at our church. To an extent the attractional model is still working in the American church. People are still looking for a way to connect with God, and the older generations in particular still recognize that the church is the place to find God. Sometimes "seekers" walk in to a church, and have a spiritual encounter that leads to their conversion The "missional" pattern is more outward focused, often emphasizing reaching people where they are, and empowering the people to take the work of the church outside the church walls. Their motto is often: Let's get out there where the people are, and introduce them to God. The missional church has its challenges, but tends to be more active in social justice causes, and tends to be more effective at reaching the younger generations. The missional church sees fewer "instant" conversions, and more "gradual" conversions as people walk through a process of giving their heart to Christ. My observations tend to indicate that many of today's churches are currently a mix of both, struggling to be "missional" while riding the wave of "attractional" ministry as it starts to taper off at the shoreline. Evangelism Dictionary.com defines it this way: e⋅van⋅ge⋅lism /ɪˈvændʒəˌlɪzəm/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [i-van-juh-liz-uhm]–noun 1. the preaching or promulgation of the gospel; the work of an evangelist. 2. evangelicalism. 3. missionary zeal, purpose, or activity. I would agree that the work of evangelism is not distributing flyers, or purchasing Google Ads, or TV spots, but rather the act of sharing the gospel with someone. Many distribute tracts... which is another blog post for another day... Some go door to door. Some do acts of kindness, washing cars, buying gasoline, and handing out sodas or bottled water with the express purpose to explain that Jesus is the reason for the act of kindness. Some build relationships with people, inviting them to church, talking about the difference Jesus has made in their lives. Evangelism can happen in any number of ways, and certainly, a church's marketing presence can assist in the process. As people are doing acts of kindness, going door to door, handing out leaflets, building relationships, it helps if the people they are trying to reach have heard of their church, or if they have some kind of material to give them to draw them to the church building. But the key is in remembering that it's the job of the people to do the ministry. The Great Commission was not just for pastors. It was for believers. Let's not get sidetracked into thinking that if church people invite their friends to church so they can hear a "paid professional" share the gospel that our evangelistic work is done. Evangelism (preaching the gospel) is meant to be done by all of the church. The pastor's job is to equip his people to do this work. Sure, he can preach about salvation, and even present an opportunity in his service for people to surrender their hearts to Christ. But his job is to "equip the saints for works of service"- His job is to send people out... to send the church (the people) on mission. Marketing As long as the attractional model is still working, people will be looking for a church to go to. Who knows how long it will last, as our post-modern culture emerges and evolves into its next phase! Marketing is how you can position your organization in people's minds. It helps you communicate that you are an organization that cares about people, that you are provide opportunities for people to connect with God, you can use it to promote events, sermon series, or anything else. There are a number of things that your church can do to get the word out, and a number of marketing techniques. I'll post about a lot of marketing ideas over the next few months. I think the words "church marketing" leave a bad taste in people's mouths, because it sees like it "cheapens the gospel"... and churches that market and advertise can be seen as "too commercial" That's why it's so important to separate it from evangelism. It is not the same thing. Evangelism is a personal thing. Marketing is an organizational thing. Marketing is about creating a positive image for your church in the community. Marketing is about offering your services and values to the general public. Marketing is about attracting people to come and check out your church. Evangelism is about building friendships with those people that walk in the door, and the people that you meet on the street, and letting your personal relationship with God steer that person to their own personal relationship with God. Don't confuse them.

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