One size fits all usually isn’t the case—with t-shirts, or with
technology tools to enhance ministry. That’s why it’s so important
to realize that everything you do for your ministry is one-of-a
kind, and needs to be altered to fit your organization’s needs.
We realize this at ServiceU, and want to make sure that you know
we’re set up to assist you in customizing our tools to help you
attain your ministry goals.
We’ve
written about e-mail newsletters before but want to take a fresh
approach by talking about how the e-newsletter tool within EventU
can be customized to send out incredible newsletters that do just
what you want them to: Communicate your ministry vision, update
your congregation, promote events, and more—virtually anything your
heart desires.
A customized e-newsletter is a supportive tool to enhance your overall church outreach, is an incredibly effective way to reach people, and works in tandem with the EventU online calendar. What more could you ask for, right? Well, this very e-newsletter is just one example of how this tool can be customized to “look and feel” like your organization’s website and online identity.
Because of the way this tool is built, any graphic designer can edit code and change around the layout and appearance in order to seem closely related to an organization’s website. Either your church webmaster can do this (if you have one), or ServiceU can help you with this kind of customization.
Once it’s all set up, you can edit subscription settings and also put a link on your home page for people to opt in/sign up, opt out, change delivery, or newsletter subscriptions. Once you’ve sent out your e-newsletter, EventU gives you the ability to view link statistics and delivery reports that show you how many people have opened the e-mail, as well as how many unique clicks and visitors have come to your website.
Lastly, ServiceU adheres to the ICANN standard for spam. The e-newsletter service has double opt-in sign up security and sends an e-mail to your inbox to confirm subscriptions, just to make sure that your members really want to be receiving newsletters. As a church, you can input e-mails, but recipients will have to confirm registration in order to receive future newsletters.
Now that you know how to go about customizing EventU, here are a couple of pointers for how to integrate this communication tool into church outreach:
How to Better Utilize Your e-Newsletter for Outreach
- Provide a link on your website homepage to make it easy for people to sign up.
- Take the first step by signing up members; let them confirm registration once double opt-in e-mail is sent to them.
- Review e-mail statistics and link reports to make sure people are receiving and reading newsletters.
- Update e-mail addresses frequently to ensure proper delivery.
- Make sure to include information in your print bulleting and mention e-newsletter sign ups from the pulpit on Sunday to encourage reader
To see how the custom e- newsletter feature helped one of our customers get people involved, click here.