For the past five years Park has been a loyal customer of ConstantContact. In fact, we’ve been named a ConstantContact All Star the past two years.
Like most churches, we are dependent on email as way to communicate with our congregation throughout the week. On any given week we send an average of 20,000 emails using ConstantContact. This includes but is not limited to…
- 8 Minutes with God – a daily devotional email that is written by our pastors, staff and elders. Yes, that’s right, we send a daily email.
- Weekly Update – our weekly enews that highlights church news during the week [and is a huge supplement for us not having a printed weekly bulletin].
- Group Emails – our Children’s Ministry, 20s and 30s ministries each send out their own weekly updates as well.
I had worked with other email providers and ConstantContact has always been the failsafe way to go… then I was introduced to MailChimp.
[Just a head’s up this commercial is unsponsored and unsoclicited… I’m just all about it already and want you all to know about it!]
I kicked the tires for a little bit and two weeks ago we made the jump from ConstantContact to MailChimp and I’m already bananas for it.
Here’s a few reasons why…
They Have a Sense of Humor
From signing up for an account to the mundane task of creating and sending an email, they make it fun experience. They have little bits of humor peppered throughout the steps you take. Like, once you send an email it will say “Horray! You sent an email…” and gives you a few options including “eat a banana.”
Or, if someone unsubscribes from your list, you can opt to get an email notification and it reads, “well, maybe they weren’t that into you.”
Products that have a sense of humor and personality are winners in my book.
The Interface is Easy to Understand
Design matters. Their interface is easy to understand, visually appealing, and incredibly easy to use. Even a monkey could figure it out. [Bad joke?]
It’s Customizable
For a small fee you can remove their logo from your emails. You can make the emails look like they legitimately came from your organization without someone else’s branding all over it.
Sign up forms for the email lists are also customizable. You can make them look and feel like your church website and other church communications. They have a small ‘powered by MailChimp’ branding on them, but it’s minimal.
Great Templates You’ll Actually Use
Their templates are actually useful. Their pre-designed ones are versatile and ones I’d actually use.
And, if you know HTML or have a friend that does, they make it super easy to customize your emails.
It’s Cheaper
For the number of contacts we have, its actually about $15 a month cheaper than ConstantContact. Doesn’t seem like much, but when you stretch that over a year or two, that’s a pretty great savings.
And, if you’re a smaller church, you can have up 500 subscribers and send up to 3,000 emails per month [that would be 6 emails per month to a list of 500] for FREE!
Free Image Hosting
This is probably one of the hugest advantages in my opinion. Free UNLIMITED image hosting. I can’t tell you how many times we had to upgrade with ConstantContact or delete old images because we had exceeded our limit. Not the case with these guys.
AND, when you’re looking for an image, instead of seeing a list of filenames, you can actually see thumbnails. Huge win.
They are also connected with Flickr and iStockPhoto so you can seamlessly use photos you’ve uploaded or purchase them and size them to fit appropriately using picknick.
Social Media Integration
With a simple click of a mouse you have a tweet posted as soon as you mail a campaign that links to a web version of your email campaign.
In the last two weeks, we’ve had many people RT our daily devotional emails and share them with their friends… we’ve also increased our subscribership by about 50 people. That’s HUGE!
They are Well Connected
MailChimp is friends with SurveyGizmo and EventBrite, so if you use either of those, you can easily integrate them into your email campaigns and even send email reminders to people who have RSVP’d to events or have yet to respond. We’ll be moving to using EventBrite more for small events since it’s something so many people already use anyway.
They also seamlessly integrate with other products including: PayPal, GoogleDocs, Wufoo, SalesForce, and Highrise to name a few.
Deeper Reports and Tracking
Numbers matter when you’re taking anything related to communications.
MailChimp offers great reporting that allows you to see reports based on specific lists instead of an overall view of all of the emails you send. This is helpful for us with our daily devotional email. We’re now able to see what days people are reading more, what content they’ve responded to, and what time of the day they read them. And we’re able to that very easily.
Also, MailChimp allows you to see where people are opening your emails from geographically… we had no idea we had so many people in other countries reading our daily devotional emails. That was super encouraging for us!
They’re Versatile
Most people who read our emails are reading them on their mobile devices. MailChimp is versatile and can adapt itself to mobile devices seamlessly, and allows new subscribers to select which format they prefer: plain text, HTML, or mobile.
Killer iPhone App
MailChimp has a great iPhone application that makes it simple and easy for me to check our stats, add a contract, track our social media share, and see other reports. When I’m on the go, it’s a handy way to stay connected, track numbers and easily add new contacts.
Training and Great Resources
If you’re new to email marketing they have an impressive collection of how-to videos and resources to help get you started and offer free online training. Content like that in invaluable.
I’ve Barely Scratched the Surface
We’re just a couple of weeks into our relationship with MailChimp and we’re already huge fans. We know there’s so much more that it can do for us, but the value it’s already added has made the transition worth it for us. Anything else is going to be a bonus. Here’s the full list of features they offer.
If you’re shopping around or want to get a better handle of your email communications and integrate your existing social media channels to your email, look no further than MailChimp.
Check it out and change the way your church communicates via email.
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What About You?
What email service are you using now?
What are some tips you have when it comes to emailing your church?
Do you use MailChimp? What do you love about it?
