#5. Provide pastoral care
Want to make it easy for people to receive pastoral care? Create a text marketing campaign. Here are two ideas. First, encourage people to text their prayer requests. During your church announcements or in your bulletin, encourage people to share their need for prayer. After you receive their request, at a minimum, let them know you’re praying for them. Here’s one more thing:
You can also text them back. Start a conversation. Ask questions. Invite them to meet to chat. Second, connect church members with each other.
For instance, if someone has a need, send a bulk text message to your church, let them know about the need, and encourage them to reply if they can help. Afterward, you can connect these people.
Pro tip: Don’t divulge personal information via a text. Don’t include a name or specific details. Just let people know about the need in general, ask if they can help, and then let them know you’ll connect them afterward.
#6. Create awareness for, well, everything
Running a successful church event is challenging. The planning and organizing part is easy enough. You can control whether or not something gets done.
Are you getting someone to attend your event? That can be a crapshoot. You make announcements. You include inserts in your bulletin. You share it on Facebook. You even send an email to your church.
After all of this, you still hear questions like: “Where is the bake sale?”
I know this is frustrating, but here’s the reality of promoting anything:People prefer certain types of communication. With the digital revolution, paper hasn’t become obsolete. It’s just that there are so many more ways you can now connect with your church community.
One of the most effective ways to reach people today is via texting. Remember, nearly everyone in your church owns a mobile phone, and most text messages are read within one hour.
Practically speaking, if you need to promote anything in your church, you can send a text message to encourage people to sign up or as a friendly reminder.
#7. Encourage the church
Everyone, including Christians, will battle discouragement. At some point in your church, someone will experience:
- Struggles at work
- General depression
- Lack of faith
- Stress about money
- Difficult times with their children
- Marital struggles
During these moments, people (including yourself) will be tempted to wallow in self-pity. But you want to help your church members from indulging in these feelings (1 Pet. 2:11).
But how? By encouraging them to fight for encouragement in Christ. With text message marketing, you can send a timely, encouraging word.
Think about the possibilities:
- Send uplifting Bible verses.
- Provide links to a sermon.
- Invite someone to a Bible study.
- Share the latest reading from your Bible reading plan.
Pro tip: Be cautious with sending too many text messages. Like any message from any medium (phone, email), people will eventually tune you out if you send too many messages.
Text marketing for your church
In 2020, text marketing is the most effective way to connect with your church community. Will this be the case forever and always? Nah. But that’s not the point. The point is knowing how people in your church prefer to communicate, and then connecting with them in ways that are relevant and meaningful.
Today, the best way to engage your church and first-time guests is via texting.
This article on text marketing originally appeared here, and is used by permission. Jesse Wisnewski is the senior content marketer at Tithe.ly, a leading mobile giving and online giving platform. Jesse is also the founder of Stillhouse Marketing and the keeper of Copybot. He lives outside of Nashville, TN with his wife and five kids.
