You have access to so much attendee and guest data. The question is, are you using your church database well?
This will make me sound old, but I remember when most people only had three television channels to watch. Can you imagine?! Some friends in my neighborhood had cable, but only a few. On December 2, 1983, several of us gathered at our cable-friend’s house to watch the worldwide premier of the Michael Jackson Thriller music video. “I want my MTV.” And we watched plenty of commercials waiting for the video to start!
Making the Most of Your Church Database
From Mass Marketing to Micro Targeting
Back then, nearly all marketing was mass marketing. Television commercials and other forms of mass advertising were the only options. When a company mailed a catalog to your home, that exact same catalog was mass-produced and sent to every home. The cost to crank up printing presses was expensive enough. Nobody could afford to print custom catalogs. And how would you customize them, anyway? We didn’t have customer data.
When I graduated with my marketing degree, I began working at a marketing fulfillment company, primarily in print. That job was short-lived, but while there, I saw one of the first evolutions of “print-on-demand,” a massive printer/copier that used customer data to custom imprint brochures or catalogs for individual customers based on buying patterns. This was really high-tech stuff!
Today, print-on-demand is nothing. When you get a catalog in the mail, it’s been custom designed specifically for you based on your previous purchases, website browsing patterns, items you’ve placed in a web-store shopping cart yet didn’t buy, and more. The best companies use data to target you with specific ads and opportunities. Your catalog is different from your neighbors, even though it came from the same company.
With the data and technology we have today, every organization should think like a data company. Including your church.
Micro Targeting With Your Church Database
The opportunity to think like a micro-marketer in our church holds massive opportunities for our congregation and community. Yes, growing generosity or volunteer teams benefit our church, but this is much more important than us. We are in the disciple-making business. And there’s no better way to support discipleship growth than knowing where people are in their faith journey, what steps they’ve already taken, and what options could be the best next step for them. All of this is possible IF we have a good, clean church database.
Your church database helps:
- Make better decisions.
- Inspire better next steps.
- Offer programs or classes to support felt needs.
- Grow engagement.
- Communicate more clearly.
How To Become a Data-Driven Church
I assume you already have some data. You have data from children and student check-ins. You have data from group participation, volunteer teams, and giving. And you may have data from other sources.
The first step is to clean up the data. Most churches have a dirty database. It’s full of names, numbers, and emails since you planted the church! Regularly scrubbing your data is vital to using data well. Your first cleaning session is going to be taxing. Think of it like cleaning a teenager’s bedroom for the first time in a year (or a decade!). But once it’s cleaned, maintenance is much easier.
