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Can I be real with you for a second?
I’m not a big fan of direct mail.
I’m all about getting your message out there, but for many churches, I think that direct mail can be a form of scattering your money and your resources to the wind. Sort of like that parable of the man who sowed his seeds… only a few fall in the right places where they can take root and grow. I think that’s the same principle when it comes to direct mail.
I think the most valuable resource for any church of any size (or any budget!) is its people. People connect people, programs don’t. We all know the majority of people who come to church for the first time come on the arm of a friend, and in my humble experience and opinion, I think the most effective thing you can do is give people resources to connect people. That’s part of the reason why we went to a monthly program at Park. We went from creating something that was just tossed out every week to something that’s sleek, compact, has everything you need to know and can easily be passed on to a friend.
I did, however, break my rule last week… we did a direct mail.
Having just moved into our new building and a new neighborhood this summer, we decided that we needed to let our neighbors know about us. We held off until now since summer can be crazy for people… and we generally see a spike in our weekly attendance around September.
We contacted our direct mail people and found out that there were over 1,200 households within a ¼ mile radius of our building and over 6,000 in a ½ mile radius. We decided to go big or go home on this one, so we went for ½ mile… 6,000 households. That’s pretty crazy when you really think about all of the people that are right around us!
A few key things we considered as we started this endeavor…
- Proximity. We wanted to hit people who are in our backyard. Less is more… and proximity, especially in the city, is everything. The people who got this were all within walking distance of our building.
- Image is everything. We get that a church isn’t a building, but instead of using cheesy stock photos of groups of people we decided to make our building the central focus. The renovation of our building took over 2 years and we added a whole story to a section of our building. Anyone who has lived in the neighborhood has noticed something has been going on. So, instead of showing people, we thought PROXIMITY and knew that helping people visualize the building would be most important.
- Be clever, not cheesy. ‘Not Your Average Church on the Corner’ was again about our relationship to the neighborhood. We’re on a corner. A busy one. And, I just thought it was pretty clever.
- Keep it short and sweet. The text on the back was brief, but introduced who we are, what we’re about, and emphasized the fact that we get how city life is (hectic) and that we’re all in the same boat… trying to figure out how life and relationship with God can coincide.
- Incentive. We put a ‘coupon’ on the back for a free cup of coffee at our café. Intellegentsia is a Chicago-based coffee roaster that does fair trade coffee, and is a favorite of indie coffee lovers in the city. We wanted to show that brand for some brand recognition/association and hey, it’s a free cup of coffee, can’t complain. We also wanted to emphasize the fact we let people take coffee with them into our services. That’s oftentimes rare to find.
- Follow-up. If you read the fine print we told people to bring the whole card in for a free cup of coffee. That was our sneaky way of tracking how effective this venture is, and also let’s us know who actually showed up so we can follow-up with them.
The Payoff
These cards went out on Thursday, so most people received them the following day. I happened to be volunteering in our café this weekend and we had two people come with their postcards in hand. I was ecstatic.
One was a single lady. She told me that she had visited Park last year in our previous location. She said she was so excited to learn we were right down the street now and that the postcard served as a great reminder. She also mentioned that she works in marketing and that she thought we did a great job. (Gold star for us!)
The other was a couple, a boyfriend and girlfriend. He had been coming for the past two weeks and she got the postcard in the mail and decided to tag along this week!
All of them seemed to really enjoy the service and the free coffee, and now we are going to be able to follow-up with them personally.
After service our children’s director stopped me and said that a family with four kids came because of “something they got in the mail!” She said they signed up all four of their children for our midweek Awana program… that was a huge win.
So, some of my preconceived ideas on direct mail were shattered a bit today. I’m excited to see how many cards we end up getting when all is said and done. On my way home today I was praying for that lady, that couple, and that family… even if it was just for them, this was worth it. Sure, we need to be wise stewards of our resources, but being able to connect with them today was a great way for me to see why what I do really is important, no matter what the cost.
Will we do direct mail again? Maybe.
Was this ‘experiment’ worth it? Absolutely.
Hey Tim,
I’m glad to hear the mail out piece is having some success. It would make for an interesting followup post about the overall success of it.
When it comes to mass mail outs I do feel like we get very little return from each piece. Great analogy with the sower sowing seed. It’s much more effective to have people inviting. As Seth Godin says turn the funnel into a megaphone.
But I’ve had some ideas rolling around my head when it comes to church mass marketing (mail outs/ billboards/ etc…) I’ve started looking at them as pieces to develop brand recognition so when someone is personally invited in our community they have an idea of what they are being invited to. There is a recognition even subconsciously about our church. They may not realize where they heard about us but they recognize us.
In contrast to current “church marketing” ,where we should show people and not the building, I think the building should be the focus on most “first contact” marketing. If you were to ask people what is the most recognizable part of your ministry, it would be the building. Like you said people recognize your building, maybe they’ve been wondering what’s going on there, now they know. Like Park my church is on one of the busiest streets in our city. It’s a great location and when you tell people where we are most people automatically know what church we’re talking about.
Again it’s a great piece your team did and it’s great to hear what God is doing in the “Big C” Church.
Hey Tim,
I read your blog regularly. Sometimes it disturbs me. I have lots of questions about the things you think about Park or sometimes the way you phrase things about the neighborhood. I have decided to attempt to open a conversation because as believers maybe we can sharpen each other. You can post this comment if you like, but I am sending this more as an email to you.
The question I have with this particular blog post is,
Did you send this direct mail out to the projects that are super close to your new building? Did you send them to the row houses? Did you walk out and around the corner to the bevy of men loitering at the corner store and offer them a free cup of coffee? Or did the boundary end at Division which not only is a physical boundary, but one of culture and class as well?
I look very much forward to opening a dialogue with you on your work in this neighborhood. It is very personal to me for many reasons.
Thanks Tim,
Sarah Murphy