Jump Start Your Email Strategy This Year: Part 2 – How to Nurture your List
This is the second 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!
Here’s part 1 if you missed it!
The Subject of Names
Just like when communicating in person, people like to be acknowledged, heard and seen.
This same holds true in digital communication.
That’s why including a name in an email subject line is so important.
Most email templates will allow you to add the receiver’s first name as part of the subject line; provided you have it.
When asking for email addresses in a pop up form or on your website, it’s common to also prompt for the person’s name; we highly recommend asking for first and last name separately; that way it’s much easier to be able to use a person’s first name for a more personal greeting.
For example, using a first name in Mailchimp, requires that you format your name like:
*|FNAME|* where FNAME is what you have titled the first name column in your audience list.
If the first name is not filled in, Mailchimp will substitute “Friend” in there so it’s not blank and leaving an empty space.
Another spot to add a personal touch is in the “From” box. Your email management system may want to default this box to the name of your church or community. But replace it with a person’s name, and that will appear in their inbox when the email is received.
The Subject of Subject Lines
Instead of a generic, vanilla subject line, try to write one line that highlights a topic in the email or invokes curiosity in the reader in some way.
*|FNAME|*, often feel like you’re running at full speed?”*
Hi, |FNAME|*, have you forgotten how to relax?
*Are you honoring the Sabbath, |FNAME|*?
In short, highlighting a pain point if the body of the email is intended to address this topic.
You can use this technique for more routine emails as well. Rather than just “January Newsletter” or “Upcoming Events”, create an interesting subject line from the lead article in the newsletter or highlight something particularly noteworthy about your upcoming events.
Try real hard not to be click-baity; which means using subject lines like “You’ll never believe what happened to…”. or “Only open this if you…”. It has its place, but don’t overdo it.
Nurture
The act of nurturing is caring and encouraging; and looks to help something or someone grow.
As spiritual leaders, you very likely nurture people every day. But how, and why, do you nurture an inanimate object like an email list?
An email nurture sequence is a series of automated emails that are sent at scheduled intervals to a certain set of individuals on the list with a specific goal in mind.
In the business marketing world, they are typically used to get you to buy a product or service; that’s its purpose. Each email is a bit different than the one before it; approaching the topic at a different angle, or offering different benefits of the product.
In the context of faith and ministry, you, as leaders, are called to love and to serve and to be in community with people.
The holistic goal of your email list should be to make connections and build relationships with your community – NOT just to invite them to events.
Nurturing goals could be:
- Inviting
- Teaching
- Connecting
No doubt you have put a lot of effort into the content you will be sharing in your emails. Surely you’ll want to take care that your email subscribers stay on your list and remain engaged with your content and community.
Nurturing activity may look different across various communities, but the overall principles remain the same.
- Welcome new subscribers
- Automate communication for consistency
- Segment the list into logical areas
Welcome New Subscribers
The first email that all new subscribers should receive is a warm welcome from a pastor or staff member or a volunteer from the pastoral care team.
Even though the sequence is “automated” you can still give it a personal touch by using the first name of the receiver in the subject line and greeting.
Before asking anything of them, first tell them a bit about yourself and your community.
Even though we caution against talking only about yourself on your website, this is a different medium; more personal and direct, and the person has, in essence, reached out to you first by joining your email list. You want to try to relate to them personally by opening up and perhaps being vulnerable.
Be sure to direct them to your website for more information about your community that you haven’t yet offered in the email.
And while there, encourage them to visit the “meet the staff” page to put faces to names.
Pro Tip: Link these pages directly in the body of your email. Only one link per line so the reader is not confused by too much text on the same line.
Automate Communication for Consistency*
Putting your emails on autopilot may sound like a complicated task, but it is well worth the effort. After all, you set it up once and it kicks in forever, or until you stop it.
Here is an example workflow for an email nurture sequence to welcome new subscribers to your list.
- When an email address is added to your list from the homepage of your website, you might tag this email as “general website visitor” and they will first receive the “Welcome New Subscriber” message as described above. This should go out within a few hours of their subscribing.
- The second email, scheduled to be sent 2 days later, is a follow-up message to the first, offering more detailed information about your community or perhaps answering some frequently asked questions that new folks ask.
- The third email, sent 4 to 5 days later is even more personal and extends an invitation for the receiver to call you or contact you via email with any specific questions they may have. Offering some specific times for this call will let them know they are not bothering you and they are indeed welcome to call.
When (or if) this person gets more involved in your community is the time to gather more data in order to tag their email address more specifically with their interests, but not before.
People may not want to divulge too much information about themselves or their families right away. And that’s ok. Your nurture sequence should be designed to give them time and space to get comfortable with you and build a relationship.
Nurture them, don’t nag them!
*Note: Not all email management systems offer automation with a free plan (Mailerlite does, Mailchimp does not).
Tags
Creating and maintaining tags in your email list is useful as a targeting method. In other words, you focus your email distribution to be aligned with a specific tag. This is helpful for your entire list / membership, not just new folks.
These can take any form that makes sense for your faith community.
Just a few examples include:
- Exploring New Churches: New to the area; looking for a church home
- Possible Membership: May want to become a member
- Education: Interested in joining in education/book or Bible studies
But what if you’re using Mailchimp only? You don’t know or track (or care) who is a “member”. You can add a tag in these lists by passing along a tag from the sign up form.
In fact, email marketing services like these are built for just that; defining markets for more direct and effective email campaigns.
For example, a visitor is browsing your website and lands on the “I’m New Here” page; this would let them know what to expect when or if they visit in person or join an online event.
Your email address popup can embed the tag* Exploring New Churches in the contacts name when they are added to the list. This is so you know what page they lingered on and what may interest them.
*Note: This functionality may be dependent on your website builder.
Having contacts tagged allows you to focus your email communication with them, instead of just sending everyone everything, which might get overwhelming and annoying. You are then able to select this tag as selection criteria when sending out an email; whether it’s a one time email or in a nurture sequence.
You can define multiple tags to be assigned to your contacts.
One email address can include multiple tags.
In Mailchimp, you can only use up to 5 tags per automation sequence.
Just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean you should do the thing.
Don’t overwhelm yourself, or your staff with too many tags that may be too narrowly defined; it may end up being an administrative burden that will be abandoned and useless.
Nurture sequences are not just for welcoming new subscribers as we’ll see in next week’s blog when we talk about engaging with your list.
We’ll close with a cheesy metaphor. An email list is like a garden; you have to nurture it and pay attention to it if you want it to grow and yield beautiful results.
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!