7: Church Email List Building Ideas to Communicate with Online Visitors

Before moving on and making changes to our Social Media and Website, we want to look at ways to capture contact information of the online visitors we gain. These people may visit our website or social media sites, but may never take the step of actually visiting the physical location of the church.

If at all possible you will want to capture these Names and Email Addresses to communicate with them in the future.

But I thought Email was DEAD.

People like to come up with all kinds of predictions about the future of everything.

Many churches have basically abandoned email for mobile communication and texting. That is a great strategy, and it is a great idea to have a texting list building strategy for your church because of the high percentage of text messages that actually get opened as opposed to email open rate percentages.

Text opt-in would be a great way to develop this sign-up list of website visitors as well.

But there is a problem with texting. You obviously cannot say much without being REALLY annoying. Everyone loves texts that are 9 segments long right?

You can get around this by texting links to pages on your website with complete information. But that is a two-step process with you having to create the website pages and content as well as the text. Again, it may be worth the effort and is still simple to use for the one receiving the text as long as your website is responsive and mobile friendly.

I also realize that many teenagers do not even have email addresses, which makes mobile and texting an excellent and maybe only way to communicate with some connected to your Youth Ministry.

And I know that email open rates are WAY lower that text open and read rates. There are also risks that your emails will go to SPAM. People get too much email and do not read all of it. I get it.

But, Email is probably not going away any time soon.

If email does go away I will simply delete this Section and move on to more futuristic holographic communication.

Teenagers may not have emails now, but they are in for a reality check when they grow up and get a job unless some new system develops.

People still use email. Companies still use email. Internet Marketers still use email. Email is NOT dead.

Yes, people are more skeptical of giving out their email address. But that is where you have to offer something VALUABLE in exchange for their email address. What you are offering typically will not be able to be squeezed into a text message.

Capturing the contact information of casual online visitors and developing a church email listing building strategy will require CREATIVITY.

You probably will not be able to just stick an Email SignUp Form on your website or social media and say “give me your email address”. You are going to have to get CREATIVE.

Most of the time when we think of new online visitors we are thinking about outreach. Yes, a percentage of your new online visitors may be filthy heathens in need of salvation. But as you know, most heathen are not online searching for churches and many people church hop.

It is even more likely that most of your church website and social media visitors are Christians in search of a new church.

Maybe they have just moved to the area, or they are not happy with their current church situation. Whatever the case, your online visitor audience may not be outreach as much as people transferring to a new church.

You also DO want to take into account that some of your visitors will NOT be churched. So what could you offer them?

Think about what you could offer someone casually looking at your Website, Social Media or Facebook Ads that would make it worth them giving out their email address and signing up for your list?

These people may not be ready to visit your physical location, but are interested in your church in some way. They would probably be willing to sign up to get further information.

Only you can answer the “What to Offer” question for your specific church and community, but here are some church email listing building ideas to help your creativity get started.

New to the Area Guide

This guide would give people information that would help them make a smooth transition moving into the area. You would, of course, include information about your church in the guide. You could deliver this in one PDF or an Email Series covering topics like local Restaurants, How to Setup Utilities, Where to get your Drivers License, etc.

CLICK HERE for an example of a complete Community Guide that we created for a Church that accomplishes this purpose. This is actually connected to the church where I (Jeremy Phillips) creator of Finding Your Church works at and attends and we believe has increased our main church website in local church search terms.

Felt Need Class Email Series

These emails would designed to give a small amount of content and lead them to sign up for an in-depth class at your physical location.

This works great for ongoing classes that you offer regularly as there would always be a new one coming up to sign up for. But you could also do this leading up to a one-time event. For Financial Peace you could offer an email series titled “5 Answers to your Money Problems”.

For a Parenting Class you could offer “3 Ways to Make Your Kids Behave”. These are just teasers with the goal of leading them to sign up for an in-depth class that could lead to them attending your church.

Email Bible Study Teasers

These emails are focused on Bible Study content that you will offer soon at your physical location. The email list allows people to sample the content, then you include a way for them to sign up for the actual study at the bottom of each email. This would also be a great way to get your current church members to register for new studies.

These are just a couple of church email list building ideas, but what could your church offer?

It would be easy during this process to just think about ideas that you would enjoy. Those may be good, but you are obviously already VERY connected to your church.

Think like a new visitor. Or, better yet, get with some people new to your church as ask THEM what information THEY would have wanted to receive that would be worth signing up for.

You will most likely want to let people know whether or not you will send them additional information after they receive your initial offer. Plus, you will most likely NOT want to sign them up for your internal email list at first. They probably do not want to know about the upcoming church business meeting.

You definitely have to be concerned about people actually opting in to your list and not just signing people up for other lists and sending them content that they did not ask for.

You will probably want to limit your future communication to that list to major community focused events, or content that is related to the reason they signed up. If they signed up to for the Parenting Class teaser offer, you may want to let them know about an upcoming Marriage Class for example.

The point is to get creative and start developing a list of people to communicate to in your community, not just within the walls of your church. You could even run Facebook Ads targeted toward people in your community who would be interested in the content you want people to sign up for.

If you use the right Email List Building Service, that person can always unsubscribe if it gets to the point that they do not want to receive further communication from you.

Email List Building Tool & Online Resources

There are many options and services available for you to use to begin building your email list.

One of the first places to check is to see what your people management software that you already use recommends [like Fellowship One or Church Community Builder]. Sometimes they already have a connection with a specific company that will integrate into their system.

This may even allow you to setup groups inside your people management software and add people directly to the group when they sign up for the email list. This has been the case at least in the past with BombBomb and Church Community Builder. Planning Center connects with MailChimp. Using this external email service lets you send much better looking emails than the built in email software used inside the people management software.

There are many options besides BombBomb including Constant Contact and MailChimp. Most, if not all, have a FREE or low-cost trial period.

Any of these will work for your church to simply capture email addresses and email the group in the future. You could even deliver your offer in the Thank You email automatically by including an external link to a PDF or YouTube video.

However, if you want to deliver an Email Autoresponder Series where a few emails are delivered to the person over a few days automatically after they sign up, you will possibly need to pay a minimum amount per month.

Usually, the amount you pay depends on how many people have signed up for the lists you create, but typically you can create as many lists as you want. You usually only pay for the number of email subscribers you have.

AWeber Email Marketing

As mentioned above, there may be a reason for you to use a specific Email List Building Service, but Finding Your Church has used >> AWeber.com [my affiliate partner link].

One of the main reasons is because AWeber is one of the most widely used Email Marketing Services by Internet Marketers. This group of online entrepreneurs has to have a reliable list building service to maintain their business email lists. Nearly every Internet Marketer I listen to and follow recommends AWeber.

They also have a FIRST MONTH FREE Trial and then start at a low cost per month after that. They also have excellent Chat Support and Training Tools.