If you’re looking at a simple way of saving a few more trees, as well as connecting more effectively with your people, why not transition your Church Newsletters and Church Bulletins to digital format? The ultimate goal of our church literature is to help people to connect with our church community and make them aware of key upcoming events and other points for consideration. With traditional paper bulletins, you can have no guarantee that it will reach everyone in the church. However, by sending digital versions via e-mail, you can track exactly who will have received this information and give your congregation the tools to access this important information on the go. In this article we will explore one great method to utilise technology in this way.
MailChimp
MailChimp is a fantastic e-mail solution for managing newsletters, bulletins and general advertising for church life. It is used by more than 10 million people in the UK and better still, it is completely free for users with up to 2000 subscribers, making it perfect for the majority of churches. MailChimp gives you the ability to bring your church communications up-to-date and provides a platform for reaching the outer church, as well as improving how we get in touch with our members.
Mobile Friendly
One of the many benefits of MailChimp is that it creates emails that look great across a wide range of devices. Conservative figures indicate that over 50% of e-mails are opened using a mobile device, however I suspect that the figures are much higher. As a result of this, when it comes to making your e-mail’s look great across all devices is important. There’s nothing worse than having text or images that don’t fit on your screen, or additional functionality that doesn’t work as it should. MailChimp does the hard work for you and automatically generates a mobile friendly version of all of your communications. It also gives you the ability to get a mobile preview and make any amendments as required before sending out to the masses.
Get Creative
MailChimp gives you the ability to explore a range of design options and apply your own branding without being unnecessarily complicated. There is no real technical know-how required and MailChimp have a range of great resources to help you when you get stuck. You can incorporate text, images, videos, social media integration and much more into your colourful, attractive e-mails and this will hopefully encourage engagement with the church in a range of different ways.
Direct Integration
As a standalone system, MailChimp is a great resource, however iKnow takes things one step further. Your iKnow database links directly into your MailChimp account, eliminating the need for you to manually update your list of contacts. This synchronises daily, ensuring that your list is always up-to-date and you won’t be leaving anyone out. MailChimp draws in a range of information from the people module in iKnow. This gives you the ability to create segments within your MailChimp list and target specific demographics within the church. This is perfect if you are advertising a Men’s Fellowship event, or an event targeted at your young adults between the age of 18 and 30.
Hopefully this article has given you something to think about, and so I would encourage you to sign-up for a free MailChimp account and start playing. As mentioned, there are some great resources on hand to help you get started. Simply visit http://mailchimp.com
Likewise, if you are interested in knowing more about iKnow and it’s ability to integrate with MailChimp, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’re here to help!