Improving Communication with Your Congregants in 4 EZ Steps

As you move into the holidays, are you ready to connect with your congregants? At this time of the year, simple but effective communication is key. What techniques can you use to send your message home? 

1. Post and Repost 

People are busy during the holidays. They get overwhelmed by activities just as they get overwhelmed by information. Whether you're planning a Christmas pageant or a community dinner, you can use multiple formats to get in touch with your congregants and remind them this event is happening. These formats include:

• The church newsletter or bulletin
• A website events listing or calendar 
• Sunday announcements 
• A text message service
• Specific emails about the event 
• Post the event on social media 

2. Individualize Your Approach 

Your congregants' inboxes look scarier than usual this time of the year. Your goal is to distinguish your information from the rest, not to create so many emails that your congregants treat them as spam. How can you make communication meaningful? 

• Individualize your communication, sending your congregants notes about activities that are important to them. 
• Make sure your communication is valuable to the particular people who are involved. For example, if they value event reminders, give them event reminders. 
• Engage with those who are more vocal and those who are less so. Don't focus all of your communication on the few people who are involved in all church activities. Instead, use your communication channels to reach out to those smaller or quieter groups who are nonetheless interested in communicating with you.

According to the Houston Chronicle, "the more you can narrow your audience, the better you can identify what they want and provide it to them." With email marketing or text messaging, you can segment your audience so that you have many different groups on your list, rather than communicating with the congregation as a whole all of the time.

3. Ask For Feedback 

Another way to increase engagement with your message is to ask your congregants for feedback. Should you hold a major event on December 2nd or 4th? You can set up an online poll on a survey site to find out, or you can use text messages to create and collect a simple poll. According to Business Know How, "collecting feedback through surveys is one of the easier and most effective ways to ensure that you are in tune" with your congregants. Since people get text messages right away, you can use this method to make decisions quickly and get a high level of response when you need feedback.

4. Get to the Point 

If you're planning an event and need to remind congregants to arrive or you want to send out a reminder to bring a potluck item for the community dinner, use a communication method that's short and to the point. A text messaging service is an ideal way to get in touch with a defined audience that is interested in learning a small, specific piece of information. Since text messages need to be short, this isn't the time to explain the plot of the Christmas play. However, it is the time to remind the participants to bring their costumes tomorrow. A text message is a convenient way to contact an audience involved in a specific event. 

At EZ Texting, we're here to simplify your communication. If you're ready to make it easier to communicate with your congregants, contact us. Sign up for free today.