Email Tips to Help Your Church Communications be More Effective

Today we're going to talk about some specific email tips that your church can implement so you get a better open rate for your church emails. Are you ready? Because it's time.

You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network.

Hey heroes, my name is Tom Pounder and this is the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. This is a podcast where I bring on ministry leaders and we talk about how you can do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world. And today I'm excited to welcome back my friend Jeanette Yates to the podcast. Jeanette's a great friend of mine, a Twitter friend that we met years and years ago on Twitter and who has been someone who is just a fantastic resource and someone who I love to talk to. She works for Texan Church. and just does a fantastic job helping church communicators helping ministry leaders be more effective in their texting in their church communications and just in their ministry in general and she's just a great resource so i'm really excited to have her on today and we're going to talk about some email tips that your church can really implement today and how these tips can help create a better open rate for your emails but again it's not about the open rate it's about making sure that more people are reading your emails so that more people can connect and be in community together within the church so i'm really excited to have jeanette on but before we get to her in the interview i want to highlight what the church digital is doing right now to equip ministry leaders if you go to the church.digital and hit the equipping platform you will find different opportunities for ministry leaders who are engaging in digital, online, and metaverse ministry and how you can get coaching through cohorts or one-on-one training or just through group training and community. But these are opportunities for ministry leaders to grow and reach more people in the metaverse, in digital, and in online ministry. And so I'm really excited to be a part of that. It's a great opportunity that people have. to grow in that space and to be coached along the way with some really great people, including myself. I mean, again, I'm not the best person on there, but I am one of the people who will be on the cohort, and I would love for you to be a part of it. So go to the church.digital and go to the equipping page, and you can get all the information there for you to go to today. All right, so without any further ado, let's get into the conversation right now with Jeanette Yates talking about email tips that your church can implement today. all right with me right now is my friend my florida friend i'm i'm actually losing friends in florida they're moving elsewhere but yeah it's hot here you're you're you're still there jeanette yates the one and only jeanette yates how are you i'm good how are you yeah i'm i'm good you're kind of like a florida person now though because because you got you know i got kids yeah yeah kids in florida so yeah and actually um one of my daughter's boyfriends lives uh near close to jacksonville yeah but you know i don't i don't think i envision going down there to his house hanging out unless unless he does something bad to my daughter or something like that well if you need a place to crash you know where to go

Yeah.

Well, Jeanette, you are a woman of many wonders. You have lots going on. And so I appreciate you taking time out to spend with me. It's hard to book you. I mean, you, you've got a lot going on, but.

Like normally I'm recording another podcast at this time, but we're on a, we're on a high, you know, we're on a holiday break right now. So.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And speaking of your podcast, let's talk about that for a quick second. So Jeanette does, she's with Texan Church. She's great on that. And anytime I have a question on Texan Church, I text her rather than going to support sometimes. And I know that's not good. I need to go to support more. But Jeanette works at Texan Church. She's got a communications background and she does a lovely podcast.

called well it's with church juice and so talk to me a little bit about your podcast so i am i'm a co-host of the church juice podcast which is a um division or section of reframe ministries and i co-host that podcast with brian haley um and he um we have been doing this for a little over a year i think i was on a guest on his podcast a couple of times like a few years ago and then they pause the podcast and when they brought it back they were like let's let's see if Jeanette Jeanette can have on here so we've been having a lot of fun I love um you know there's church communications podcasts out there and each one has its own kind of thing that it does and what I really like about what we do at Church Juice is you know we're keeping it basic for the most part um and we're talking about not just like you know, sometimes we do tips for your website, tips for whatever, but other times we're just talking about like our whole last season or this season that is getting ready to wrap up has been about community building and different ways to do that using communications tools. So, you know, I like that kind of broad stroke in addition to those other types of podcasts where it's like, uh more in the nitty-gritty uh down down to earth stuff so anyway it's a lot of fun um we have a pretty you know i love him because i am not an organized person but he's like this is like we already i already know my recording days from now until march so

that's good together i love listening to it because um you know it's got a great conversation part and like you said you talk about community uh church communication stuff but the one thing that really stood out to me is that you spend like a few weeks at a time spoke focus on a certain theme or topic and i love that you you keep to that so that if i ever need to go back to something i'm like oh this is where they were talking about it in this context right so that was uh I love it a lot. And it's not long. I mean, it's long and it gets right to the point on things.

Right. Well, I will say Nate, our producer, does probably trim out a lot of my shenanigans. So anyway.

Well, I don't have anybody to edit out my shenanigans.

So if you're listening today. be prepared for watching or watching. Cause you're doing video now.

That's right. Because we're doing video now. Okay.

Tell me ahead of time.

That's the one thing for the longest time, my podcast was just simply an audio podcast. People kept on saying. Tom, do the video, Tom, do the video. And I'm like, I don't, you know, whatever. No one wants to see my face and that kind of stuff. But that's the one thing now that I'm working with the Church Digital, you know, Jeff was like, hey, we do video too. I'm like, oh, I got to tell people we're doing video and that kind of stuff. So.

Yeah, that's very important because once I did a podcast. And it was actually not only being recorded in video, but it was also being live streamed in video. And I was dressed, obviously, but behind me was my extremely embarrassing, never-ending pile of laundry. You know what I'm saying? And I was like, guys, or I mean, like, we're really, and so I was like, just excuse me for a second. And I just got up and moved it. Cause I was like, I'm not going to be able to sit here and look at it in the video for the whole hour. But anyway, that was fun.

That's awesome. Well, that's good. Okay, so this conversation we're going to have today was based actually out of one of the podcasts you did with Church Juice about email. And I thought, you know what, we haven't talked about email on my podcast in quite some time. And I thought, let's get Jeanette on here and talk about just some tips that people can look. Again, as we're in this time of year, or a new time of year, actually a new year that we're in right now, What are some tips that church communicators can be looking at in regards to email? What's going to make it more effectively for them? And you had a few that we'd love to talk about.

So before we go into the tips that I have, I do want to say, you know, you are, you know, you've got your digital boot camp. You've got, you really focus on digital. We're doing. the church digital stuff, social media, online church, all of that is so important. But one of the things that you need to be able to do is connect with people and email and text. But email is a very effective way to do that. And so getting email addresses and things like that is very important because the live stream can go down. Who knows what the social media company, they can do whatever they want. They can go away tomorrow if they wanted. And then how do you get in touch with people? Well, if you have their email addresses, that's a good way. So I just wanted to say that. That's one of the things to think about is making sure you're getting people's contact information is very important. Of course, I recommend that you get their cell phone numbers and their email addresses. But yeah, it's important to have those more you can control that more, your contact with them more when you have that information.

That's a great point. Okay, so let's just even dumb it down a little bit more. How would I go about and get someone's email address? What can I do to get their email address and their cell phone?

So if we're talking in the context of Church Online or any kind of online version of Church, know there's a couple of different ways you can do it um i love a digital connection card option and you know now you know i was around when qr codes were thing before and now they're back um and so you can simply put a qr code on the screen on the screen during the live stream somebody scans it they fill out the qr code you can also have them um you know text to get a keyword there's lots of different ways you can put a link to a digital connection card And then that digital connection card is probably the easiest way to capture that information. It's put into a database. If you're using text in church, it's put into your text in church account database. And then you're able to use that information to follow up with them. And by them filling out the card, they're saying they're giving you permission to do so, which I think is also really important, which if you're doing paper cards, unless you have a thing that says it's okay to text me, it's okay to email me. Like, I think emails you're okay with, but the texting is one of those things where people really need to opt in. And so with the digital connection card, it's that much easier.

Yeah. And I would encourage people to do this, you know, even if you got... in the actual service you can say hey if you've never filled out a digital connection card and you're not getting information about what's happening at our church whatever your church is you know fill out a digital connection card and just put it up on the screen and let people do that when we throw up a qr code uh on the screen we immediately get so many responses rather than if we just put up the website so again the qr code is definitely has a comeback right now And I would encourage you to utilize that to the best of your ability. Yeah, exactly. All right. So let's dig into some of these tips of yours. What would be one tip that you would recommend churches to do?

Okay, this is my number one. Number one thing. So I probably should have started with five and moved up. But number one, we don't need to send out emails that tell people what's already on the website. Now, your email might say, hey this big thing is coming up here's the link to it on the website yeah but you don't need to sit you don't need to do that because what you want to do is train them to go to your website You want them to not wonder what's happening. How do I figure out what's happening at church? I wonder what's going on. If they say that you want them to say, oh, I'll just go to the website and fire it up. Cause I know that's where it is. I know my church is keeping my website up to date, all these things. So you don't want to have to have, you don't want to have to send an email out. I've heard this from so many churches. They're like, well, we have to send an email out because like our person that does the website, they just don't keep it up to date. So if we don't send an email out that lists all of the announcements, then nobody's gonna know what's happening. Well, that may be true, but also like get your website murder.

Right. Yeah, I agree. I think, again, there's a lot of things where, again, if all you do is just send an email out highlighting different things that are happening in your event, they're never going to want to go to the website. They're never going to be encouraged to go to the website. and so it would be good now again i think there are times when you have to highlight something that's coming up but if you just highlight it just to highlight the event i would encourage i think maybe again this might be in your um uh your um it is actually and we can kind of get into this but it there would be a call to action there right right so that you'd say okay here we've got we've got this big service coming up if it's a christmas eve service or an easter service or or something don't just say that but give them a call to action and say what do you do with this information today you know don't just let it stay there

right so yeah that is the tip the the second tip is have a call to action and like more than that when you're sending out an email you don't want to have multiple calls to action so you don't want to say we're having a big extravaganza to of this weekend so we need you to rsvp and we're also looking for volunteers And after that is going to be Wednesday night dinner. So go ahead and put in your order for what you want. Also, you know, like that's just too much, too much, too many. Nobody's going to click on more than one link, you know. Now, I have seen this from the greats like Brady Shearer. He will send out an email and it's you got to scroll to read all of it. But it's got a lot of white space, which is nice, all that kind of stuff. And he has several buttons or several hyperlinks, but they're all for the same thing. Like, that's OK. yes you can do that but it's like we're having a big extravaganza bring your family whatever which that we could talk about why that's not what you want to say but that's another broadcast but um anyway you know we're doing this thing rsvp here boom last year when we did this it was so much fun here are some funny pictures don't forget to sign up boom there's your second second second version of the one cta blah blah blah blah blah P.S., why haven't you signed up yet? Link. I think that works, but having different CTAs, not so much. Not good.

Yeah. And someone might say, well, why would I put... an invite to the same thing multiple times or three times during the same thing well i think partly is because you highlight different things and it might catch someone's eye differently maybe it doesn't catch their eye the first time you you ask them to respond but maybe you share a personal story or a testimony and that encourages someone okay now i gotta click this thing right right because the person that clicks the top one isn't going to see the other things

they're just going to sign up and move on go check another piece of email it's the person that you're scrolling that you're trying to still get to click so you're you're building like more of a story for them to want to come to uh the event or whatever to the service

Well, and I like how you highlight that, hey, listen, we need a call to action, but we don't need multiple call to actions. Because again, by asking so much of people to respond, again, they're going to highlight, okay, well, I'll just click the first one. And then they're done. Like, at least for me, if I see multiple calls to action, I'm just going to look at the one that applies to me and just hit on it. I'm not going to look at all of them. So I think it's kind of fruitless to have multiple call to actions. And again, like you said, it's confusion for what to do.

yes so okay so those are the top two okay let's go through what's number three so i threw this number three in here because i was thinking you know like One of the things that we talk about at my job at work is, you know, about how to encourage your members or encourage your volunteers. And one of the things we talk about is just like, you're not, you don't have to just keep telling them like, don't forget to come to church on Sunday at 9 a.m. or, you know, it's Wednesday night dinner, we're having hot dogs. Like every now and then you could text something like, hey, I was thinking about you today, how can I pray for you? So it's like a surprise middle of the week, something out of the ordinary. And so the third tip for us today with our email is to do the same thing, is to surprise your email list. And that can happen in a number of ways. You can do something like a call to prayer, like, hey, our prayer team is meeting tomorrow. you have a prayer request just reply to this email it'll be kept confidential we'll just share it with the prayer team um so that could be something you could also have a special video message or note from your pastor or from you know a member or something like that that's sharing a story just something out of the ordinary that's that's different than what they normally are getting something that pops up in their email and they're like oh this isn't the same email that i get this isn't my weekly updates from the church

No, I love that. Surprise them with different things. And as you were talking, I was like, even maybe surprise them with a Starbucks gift card.

Yes, I thought that too. And I was like, it depends on the size of your church. I get it. And your budget. But yes, something like that would be like, hey, it's National Coffee Day. Go have coffee on us or something like that. Or it's National Donut Day swing by the church, something like that. um so there are lots of funny things you can do i mean i i just thought of this too my one of my co-workers loves jib jab do you know what that is yeah yeah yeah it's like this like um like an e-card i guess but you can put people's faces in it and so like around christmas time or valentine's day or something like that you could do like a jib jab with your church staff and then send that to everybody

That's great.

Yeah, I know. I'm like, that's a genius idea. I just thought right there. And I shared it with you guys first.

Yeah. See, there you go. I, jib jab is so funny. I've done that with family stuff and everything like that, but including that with the church, that would be great. And again, it's a surprise. It's not your typical email because I can imagine people getting the emails and. almost looking like, oh, it's the church email, click, delete, click, delete. I don't really need to read much about this. But if you surprise them every now and then, they're going to be anticipating every now and then you're going to be sending them something unique, something different, a surprise that they'll benefit from or laugh at in some way.

So I have a question for you, though, because I go back and forth on this email subject line.

Okay.

you think it should be the same subject line every time like here's your weekly updates from the church or should you have like a catchy email you know because like wisdom said you know the i don't know i think it is fun to like have interesting headline you know interesting subject lines but

don't know what do you think well again i think depending on who your audience is that you're trying to reach like okay so for instance when i send an email to my volunteer leaders i kind of use the same kind of line every single time and i just kind of update the date that i send it but when i'm sending a mass email i want to again when i send it to my online campus I'm using a unique title, a unique subject line to really draw their attention in. They catch their eye. I'll even use an emoji or two. At least that's what MailChimp tells me to do. Use an emoji.

Yeah, they're all about emojis.

But I like to change it up because I think it draws their attention. And if it catches their eye, they might be more inclined to look at it. So I think change the title up again, depending on who you're trying to reach.

True, true. And I think there is something to be said like, here's what you need to know this week. Yeah, like that's very clear. You know it's going to be in the email there's nothing wrong I mean that's ideal you don't want it to be so catchy that they're like, what does this even mean, like,

right well it's okay a little bit of a tangent but when you post on a youtube video and you post your sermon and you use a catchy title and i'm like i go back and change our titles on youtube all the time because if i i try to think through an eye of a non-believer and think if i'm a non-believer and i see this random video called timeless frogs i'm like that really i'm not going to be encouraged to look at that

nor is someone gonna go search youtube for timeless frogs yeah yeah like they're just not and so that's another thing you have to mess with with that whole situation but yes to your point so we could go on and on that could be a whole and again write that down it's another podcast yeah um but number four don't send an email unless you need to.

Why not? I really want to send this email. I really feel like I got to send this email.

This is one thing to maybe like think about. And especially if there's like a transition time, like we're just in the new year now, all that kind of stuff. And you're thinking like, what do I need to do to make things better? Well, if you're sending an email every week, whether you need to or not, because you've always sent an email on Mondays and that's what you do as the church. maybe ask yourself, do we need to send one every single Monday or can we just do it a couple of times a month? Maybe even try varying the day. Now, I wouldn't go one week it's a Monday and one week it's a Friday, especially if you're telling people things they need to know during the week. But you could play around with the timing of it a little bit. You could play around with the frequency. I think the bottom line is if you're copying, a lot of people, especially ones that are using some of those, template based email plans they will just duplicate from the week before and guess what they're not even having to delete that much because you know it's the same yeah so that may bring up the question like maybe you do need to see that send that email again but probably because nobody read it the first time. And if they didn't read it the first time, why are they going to read it now?

You know what I'm saying? And I like the thing of don't send it unless you really have to. I feel like we can just get in the habit of sending something when you don't have any new information sent out or you don't have anything current or you don't change it in any way. So don't just send it because then again, it just highly increases the likelihood that someone's going to hit delete, delete, delete. I don't need to read this. So I agree with you completely on that.

And then the last one is I thought about this was like, I like this one.

I like this one.

It doesn't even count as a tip, but I really think it does. So what we've been talking about is those big email newsletter type things that the whole church gets probably every week. That's what we've been talking about. Right. So what I want to say is you can still have that list. but maybe you want to create multiple lists that have more targeted information because right now let's say you've got this one list for all members. So, you know, some of the members are the older people and they've got their just older youth club and they've got their meeting that they got to attend and dah, dah, dah. And then you've got parents of youth and you've got to tell them about the retreat and the this and the that, and then you've got children and there's stuff happening. And so you do have a ton of things that you have to talk about in the one email.

Yeah.

But if you have one all church email, And then you have an email list that's just parents of youth, email list that's just parents, children, et cetera, et cetera. Then you can ask yourself, what do I need to tell the whole church? I bet it narrows that down quite a bit and you get closer to that one CTA situation.

I agree completely with you. And again, I think that's so important. Some people call it segment. You segment your list and create different lists. Like I know at our church, we have an email list for our volunteers. We have an email list for the whole church, for student ministry, for children's ministry, for my online campus. I mean, we have so many different lists. And again, so again, when you're sending out very general information that encompasses the whole church, it's good to send it out to the whole church. But again, you don't want to be sending out a bunch of information on student ministry if the whole church, like most of them, aren't in student ministry. They don't really care about that. So I think to have those segmented lists out there would be very effective for you to have a better open rate, honestly.

Yeah. Yeah. So I just think that's important too, because, you know, part of the struggle that church communications directors or whoever's in charge of the email have is I hear what you're saying, but this is the information that has to get out there. And so I think the way to solve that problem is to segment your list so that you can tell everybody what they need to know, but not everybody needs to know the same thing.

Right. That is perfect. There you go. You summed it up so well in there. So now this is good because again, I like what you said again, I think we've, you and I in the past, when we've talked on the podcast and just randomly talking, um, we talk about how effective, how effective, how effective texts texting is, you know, the open right there and how, you know, email pales in comparison but still you can get a high open rate on your emails and email is still an effective way to communicate especially in this digital world we're living in i mean we need to email well and it's funny because you know yes i'm a big fan of texting texting has an extreme open rate response rate click through you know all that stuff

you send a link click through but um but there's a lot of times when i'm talking to our members that use text in church they're like oh it's you know i've got this long text and you know it doesn't always work right or whatever i'm like okay so if it's that long that does need to be an email yeah you know um and so um there is a place for email and texting an email serves different purposes i know like when we um do devotional you know seasonal devotionals at my church we send out we're sending out several times a week via email a devotional we're also gonna we're not gonna text them every single day yeah

we will text them and just ask a question about the devotionals that they've been getting yeah just to kind of you know remind them to check their email that's right yeah that's exactly right again you're limited in what you can send again when i'm sending something via our texan church platform uh a shameless plug for jeanette there um but when i'm sending i'm limited to 160 characters i mean Wait, am I? No, I just don't want it to go over into two messages.

Yes, I was going to say, to be clear.

Yes, you're right.

Text in church does not limit. It is the carriers that limit.

There you go. That's true.

And we allow up to three 160 character segments to go out as one text.

Oh, okay. We're going to have to talk about that on the side. That would be helpful. But again, when I'm sending out a text in church, it does warn you.

It does say, hey, this is long. It might not go through depending on the carrier. It does let you know that.

Yeah. And I think that's where the value of email is because you can do a lot of different things with email. It doesn't mean you have to have a super long email, but it means that you can communicate a little bit more. And I like how you talk about how you have a devotional segment for your email and you send out emails. We do the same thing. And those are really effective because people opted into that and wanted to get those emails. You're not just sending them generic stuff. And that's true, too.

Some people only want to get a church email once a week. see what's going on, whatever. Other people are like, I know what's going on. I go to church every Sunday. I get the bulletin. I mean, I see it on the slides. I get it on YouTube or on Facebook ads. Like I get it. And, but they might be interested in a short-term devotional or something like that. And so And then once they sign up for the devotional, you have their email address and you can email them important things like during hurricane season. I'm just saying.

Yeah, that's right. All right, Jeanette. Well, this has been very helpful. This is encouraging. And I know people listening will be encouraged. Any other final thoughts as we kind of wrap up?

I mean, come hang out with Tom and I on Twitter. Where are you?

That's right. we'd like to see you we're all over there yes it's it's where all the cool kids hang out it is it is bring your gift game though if you come over there yeah you you have to have to be strong i mean jeanette is really powerful with her gift game i mean so you know good

well listen i'm going to include all your links uh one for your twitter one for church to use also for texan church if people are interested to check out and we're really we're hyping up for um engage that's right yes any any thoughts on engage well it's free it's a free online conference first of all hello um you've spoken at engage before you know um i'm really excited about this year because we have a lot of um diversity and the in the leaders that we've asked to speak and really getting some interesting um in um training and insights and strategies about things that we normally you know might not think about like your volunteers and you know your own personal um leadership and um you know we've got some broad topics like that but then you know uh we've got people coming in with like these are the seven apps you need to have to be the most productive you know and then you know where i'm thrilled as a sports fan slash Christian slash communications person. Derwin Gray is going to be one of our speakers, former NFL star and now pastor of Transformation Church, I think is the name of this church. They're called the Transformers, which I think is great. I want to be a member. But, you know, and we've got Marian Sibley's coming back. We've got Jennifer Benton. We've got... michael jr is going to drop a little humor in there so lots of fun lots of you know we're going to do some giveaways as we always do during the kickoff session things like that lots of fun and of course it's free so make sure you give that link to them too because yeah that'll be a great you know get the year going right kind of thing it's february 8th through 10th

I was just going to say it's in February. So yes, they have a few weeks to sign up still. So it's good. And it's free. So it's good.

It's free. And you get to hang out. Hey, I'll be there.

Yeah. You'll be running the Facebook group stuff, right? Of course. Yes.

May even hang out on Twitter this time too, Tom, just for you.

Oh, I like that. I like that. All right. Well, Jeanette, as always, it's great talking with you and catching up. So I hope you have a great rest of your day. You too.

Thanks guys.

All right, so what did you think? What are the tips that Jeanette mentioned that are really sticking out to you, really standing out to you? I would love to talk to you a little bit more about this. Just go to Twitter and at TAPounder and just share with me just a tip or two that you thought was helpful. But also, if there is a tip or two that you said, hey, you guys didn't mention, but I found this to be effective, share that along the way. I would love to talk to you a little bit more about this and carry on the conversation with you. And I'm sure Jeanette would love to do the same. Again, it's always great having Jeanette on the podcast. So love for you to connect with her on Twitter as well, because she loves Twitter just as much as I do. All right, heroes, well, thanks so much for joining me for another episode of the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, go and subscribe to it. It's on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify. Whatever platform you're on, go there. Go to thechurch.digital for more blogs and podcasts that I have coming up. And also go to the equipping page so you can learn how to get some great coaching and training on how to do more online ministry more effectively. Alright heroes, well I hope you have a great rest of your day, a great rest of your week, and until next time, have a great one.