Three Reasons Every Church Needs to Send an Email Newsletter

Email newsletters are a popular tool used by many business to not only promote their business but also to keep engaged with their members. One of the reasons that they are so popular is that they easy to send, very affordable and can be customized using custom HTML email templates to help get across their message.

While many people may not consider it, email newsletters are a tool churches should be using regularly. Three of the biggest reasons every church needs to send an email newsletter are:

One: Keep Engaged with Members

A church email newsletter is a great way to keep engaged with your members when they are not in the church. From summaries of sermons to inspirational messages there is a lot of different content you can include in your church email newsletter that your members will find helpful and informative.

Sending your email newsletter will keep your members engaged but it is important to not overburden your members with too many emails.

Two: Targeted Messages

During a sermon you may discuss a variety of topics with the members of a church without having the ability to go into great detail on one specific topic. A church email newsletter sent after a sermon is a great opportunity to provide a more targeted and detailed message on a single topic.

The email newsletter can be used to provide more details, links to readings you referenced or photographs on the topic you are discussing after your sermon. It is also a great avenue for providing details on an upcoming events the church will be hosting.

While the newsletter can be used to give a more targeted, detailed message, it is important not to go overboard with the amount of details you provide. If the content of your newsletter is to too long or not engaging you risk turning readers off and having them not read it the whole way through.

Try to find the right balance between the amount of the amount of content you provide and the length of the email.

A digest style email often works when you have a lot to say but you feel putting everything in the email will be too much. A feature like Flashissue’s curation tool lets you clip a webpage or blog post and include a mini summary of the page instead of all the content (this can have the added benefit of driving people back to your blog to read the content as well.

Three: Market Your Church

A church email newsletter is a great way to market your church through your existing members to gain new members. Your email newsletter can be created in a way so it can be easily forwarded by your members to their friends and family giving them a view into your church. It could provide sermon times, group meeting times and information about the churches involvement in the community allowing readers to get insight into your church.

Make sure you have a call to action in your email i.e. ask your readers to do something. Do not over load the email with too many CTA’s. Once is best but 2 can work. You can even word the same CTA differently but it has the same result.

As an example: The top CTA below is not bad but the green button is not explicit enough. A better message for the button would be “Click To Donate” or “Support Us Now”

While having your members send out your church email newsletter to recruit members, it is important not to make your members feel as if they have to send the email to their friends and family. This could risk you upsetting your members and risk alienating them from the church.

Try to take a tactful approach when discussing it with your members with an emphasis on it being optional.

At the end of the day, good quality and engaging content reigns supreme. Your Church newsletter should be something that YOU want to read (and then you’re audience probably will as well)

Church Newsletter examples

Here’s a showcase of some effective Church emails:

http://app.flashissue.com/newsletters/god-just-keeps-expanding-our-reach-14
http://app.flashissue.com/newsletters/cdbacd6377ebf2062a1239e68d03cfafb95f2d3d
http://app.flashissue.com/newsletters/cca439789da858bf640727a4ed72c242dd5d91c2
http://app.flashissue.com/newsletters/bb1131f2fb39251bd0bbfa0b9e9f190e1c93a0b3