Jump Start your email list today thumbnail

Jump Start Your Email Strategy This Year: Part 1 – Back to Basics

This is the first of a four part series intended to help you hit the ground running this year to build your email list and get your readers engaged and comfortable in taking next steps with your faith community or organization.

Click here for the video version of this blog!

We’ll be starting with the basics and stretching you a bit more with each article.

Here’s what to expect in the next few weeks. 

  • How to grow (or start!) your email list
  • How to nurture your email list
  • How to engage with your email list

First things first. Do you even have an email list?

If yes, great! We’ll offer tips on how to grow it.

If not, that’s ok too. We’ll review the basics of what’s needed.

Yes, I have an email list; at the moment, I only have email addresses for my church staff and Aunt Myrtle.

You may have a small email list, but there is power in that. Even if you have only 10 or 20 people on it, chances are each of those people know someone who might be interested in hearing about your community. 

So let’s start there.

Write an email to your existing list with the specific intention of asking those folks to share with their email contacts, what your faith community has meant to them. These contacts might include their family, friends, coworkers or community groups (sports, parenting, civic, etc).. Having your community member share a personal anecdote or experience they’ve had as a member, helps to make this email more personal and less like ‘marketing’. 

You may even go so far as to give them a blurb or two to include in the email. This works well if you can wrap this request in with an upcoming event, either virtual or in person, that will be occurring soon; think of denominational speaking events, youth gatherings, learning opportunities or virtual summits.

Specific intention is key here. 

  • Don’t bundle this in with a list of events you have going on or volunteering requests. 

Create a single purpose email for this request. 

  • It’s likely to get better engagement and response. In other words, don’t overwhelm your reader. 

Clearly suggest to them the specific next steps or action they need to take to help make this intention a reality. 

  • Use a bulleted list for simplicity and clarity. 

 Lastly, follow up with a thank you to your current members and a personal welcome email to those who were referred by them.

  • Appreciation and personal connection do not go unnoticed amidst the cacophony  that is canned email, social media and auto texting. 

No, I don’t have an email list and don’t even know how to start one.

You may think you don’t have an email list, but we’re willing to bet you do; it just may not be obvious to you. If you have a Church management system, member or donor list or some other method of collecting information on your members, you may very well have email addresses embedded in there. 

You can either extract these email addresses from their source or use a merge method to combine them with your email content. 

For example, your church management system likely allows you to create a group or a view of members with a certain criteria. You would then use this list in conjunction with your ChMS to send messages out to this group. This is sometimes referred to as a “mail merge”. 

Voila! You have an email list. Tricky thing here is that it’s tied to your ChMS. You can export it to a useful format for importing to an email service. 

Another method is to use an email service directly, such as Mailchimp or MailerLite. 

Both of these are free up to a certain number of emails per month. 

With Mailchimp, for example, the free version allows you up to 2000 subscribers on your list; and 10,000 sent emails per month. That’s a lot! 

The catch is that you do not have access to all Mailchimp templates (though a good amount) and all features. And you can only have one “audience” defined. The work around to this is using segments or tags which we’ll get to later in this series. 

Mailchimp is widely used and it’s quite easy to find YouTube tutorials on how to import email addresses into your audience list from a spreadsheet or other properly formatted file. 

If you’re lucky enough to be using a ChMS that integrates with an email marketing platform like Mailchimp, you’re already ahead in the game. The additional steps to connect the two are likely easily found within the help area of your ChMS or with the aid of support reps. 

If you aren’t using a ChMS. that’s ok. You can still build an email list with the addresses of people already involved in your community. Just ask them and go on from there.

Later on in this series we’ll talk about Lead Generators – getting new people on your list.

Growing the List

Now that you have established the foundation for the list, how do you keep it growing organically?

Make sure it’s easy to get on (and off!).

  • Ask for the least amount of personal info as possible. First name and/or Last name and email address. We would suggest requiring at least a first name. There’s no reason to get their whole life story on the email signup form.
  • Use pop-ups on your website to collect emails; yes they are annoying but they work! 
  • Use Linktree on social media apps that point to a web page that will collect emails.  
  • Let your potential subscribers know how they can unsubscribe from your list. This is not only courtesy, but a legal requirement in some countries.

Make it enticing to join your community’s list.

  • An email address is a valuable commodity. Encourage people to join by offering exclusive content available to only those who give you an email address (referred to as a Lead Generator in marketing world); look for more about this in a future post in this series. 
  • Use active voice language and relate to potential subscribers one to one. Instead of just having “Subscribe” on your button, you can have something like “Yes, I want to hear more about this community and what it has to offer me” or “Yes, I need hope, healing or light (or all of the above). Sign me up, please!”

That’s all for now. 

Stay in touch for the rest of the series!.

Whether you’re just starting or have started and want to keep going and growing, we invite you to stay in touch for weekly email updates about the latest digital ministry tips, tools, and trends!