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How to Use Push Notifications to Increase Engagement

#5. Prompt your church to invite others

According to Dr. Thom Rainer, “96 percent of the unchurched are at least somewhat likely to attend church if they are invited.” Ninety-six percent. Let that sink in for a moment.

After you have learned how to use push notifications you can use them to encourage your church to invite their friends, neighbors or coworkers to your church’s worship service or special event. Remind them that the vast majority of people are open to attending a worship service.

For your worship service, use this type of message sparingly unless you’re running a short-term challenge. If you schedule these messages every week, you’ll run the risk of them falling on deaf ears before too long.

#6. Promote events

Do you have an event you need to promote? Are you encouraging people to get involved in your small group ministry or attend a Bible Study?

Send your church a push notification that encourages them to register for your event or class. You can also include a link for them to learn more information if you have it available on your church’s website.

#7. Encourage people to give

Many people choose to donate on Sundays. But data we’ve collected reveals that most people prefer to give throughout the week!

At times, you can use push notifications to encourage mobile giving in your church.

If you’re concerned people won’t give with their mobile device. Don’t be.

Here are three things to keep in mind:

  • Most people in the United States own a smartphone
  • Smartphone users use their phone to shop and give
  • Smartphone users spend a ton of time on apps

With Tithe.ly, people who download your church app can receive a simple push notification to encourage them to give or to participate in a capital campaign or fundraiser you’re coordinating.

You can also use this list of giving scriptures in the Bible for different verses about generosity you can share in your notifications.

#8. Share stores

Do you have encouraging news you can share with your church?

If you think about it for a moment, I bet you can come up with a ton of good news you can share. In the notification you send promoting a story, you won’t be able to share everything. But that’s not the point. Include a link to a blog post you wrote or a video you shot for people to learn more.

#9. Promote discipleship and service

You can use push notifications to nudge your church to read the Bible, pray or serve their neighbor.

For instance, you can:

  • Remind people about your church-wide Bible reading plan
  • Encourage your congregation to invite their neighbors over for dinner or coffee
  • Provide specific prayer prompts
  • Recommend resources on the Christian life
  • Prompt people to do something kind for someone else
  • Challenge your congregation to ask their neighbors if they can pray for them

As you read this list of suggestions, identify ways you can encourage your congregation to live and love like Jesus.

#10. Use Interactive Sermon Notes

Feel like people in your congregation are staring at their phone during your sermon?

Well, instead of asking them to turn off their phones, you can encourage them to, dare I say, use their phone in church.

Some church app providers, you can create interactive sermon notes only accessible in your app. With your notes, your congregation or visitors can use their phone to follow along during your sermon, take notes and answer questions.

Know the best part?

Providing sermon notes in your app gives you with an opportunity to naturally promote your church app every week, boost engagement and send a push notification to your church afterward.

As a suggestion, you could say something like this at the beginning of your sermon:

“If you open our app, you can follow along in the notes, take your notes, or you can look at the notes on the screen behind me.”

After your sermon, you can send a push notification to your church about the sermon included with a link back to the sermon notes.

Over to you

Regardless if you have a church app with limited engagement or you just launched your church app, work through this plan to boost your church’s engagement.

Commit to making a plan and working your plan for at least six weeks. By the end of this time, you should will have learned how to use push notifications, and observed a significant uptick in the number of people who use your church’s app, as well as an increase in activity in your church.

 

This article on how to use push notifications was provided by our business parter at Tithe.ly