a. Group together folks who prefer text messages to email or voice; reach out to them with short messages or reminders of events that they would be interested in or are already signed up for.
b. Aim to send specific ministry news to members who have opted in or volunteer in that area of ministry instead of to the entire congregation.
c. Avoid reaching out to the entire congregation through mail, email and voice all at once unless there is a real emergency, time change or some other really important reason.
3. You communicate too frequently.
It’s easy to forget something in the church-wide email and decide to send a second email with an update, but you run the risk of annoying people with too much frequency. Same goes for text messaging. Unless you’re the high school pastor and are constantly in personal communication with kids, there’s usually not a good reason to text people more than once a week. I typically remind my Bible study group of our Thursday morning get together the night before, and send one email a week with details on our lesson, sent in enough time for them to prepare. When you reach out too many times, people begin to tune you out.
a. Limit text messages to once or twice a week.
b. Limit church-wide email to once a week, or once every other week.
c. Limit voice communication to one voicemail a week.
d. Limit your Facebook posts to one or two a day.
Lastly, if you’re looking for a church technology communication expert to help you develop a plan for your digital church communication strategy, I invite you to check out One Call Now, a leader in faith-based messaging. They have a whole division devoted to assisting churches in communicating with their members through voice, text and email.
How frequently do you communicate with your members via email and text?
