Seven Church Newsletter Mistakes And How To Fix Them

Church Newsletter Mistake #1 – Not Using An Email Service

If you are serious about using email to reach people, you need to stop using your everyday email client. Whether you use Outlook or Gmail in your day-to-day, you should never bcc your whole church email list and send out messages. 

The great news is that most email services are free for smaller lists. MailChimp offers a free service that allows up to 2000 contacts. That’s more than enough for the vast majority of churches out there. 

Church Newsletter Mistake #2 – Not Cleaning Your List

Everyone hates it when someone unsubscribes from your email list. But did you know it’s good news? An unsubscribe doesn’t hurt your delivery rates as much as someone who never opens any of your emails.  

Make it a habit at least once a year to get in there clean up your email list. If someone hasn’t opened any emails or has never clicked on a link, it would be better for you to remove them from your list. The higher your open rate and clickthrough rate, the more likely your emails are to be delivered. 

Church Newsletter Mistake #3 – Sending Emails At The Wrong Times

Many churches think the best time to send out the church newsletter is the moment it’s finished—this probably isn’t the best idea. There are good times and bad times to send emails. The best sending times differ from church to church, but generally speaking, mornings in the first half of the week are best.

Even better, many email service providers offer send-time optimization. This is a tool that predicts a user’s optimal open time and sends the email precisely then. We highly recommend it. 

Church Newsletter Mistake #4 – Sending Ugly Emails

You probably already knew this one, but if your email is ugly, there is less of a chance that people will respond to it. Your branding and design should be a part of each email so that recipients know it’s from you and are more likely to engage with it. 

That being said, there is a case to be made for plain text emails. Here at REACHRIGHT, we have tested and found that leaving our weekly email as plain text and very short actually increased our conversion rates. 

Church Newsletter Mistake #5 – Using Unispired Subject Lines

The era of not judging a book by its cover is over. If you do not grab someone’s attention with a subject line, that person will never open the email. It doesn’t matter what you have written inside. They won’t see it. 

If you are having trouble coming up with a pithy subject line, you can find many email subject line generators out there. Our favorite is the one from the folks at Active Campaign.

Church Newsletter Mistake #6 – Forgetting The Call To Action

You would never preach a sermon and not give an application. People want to know what to do after as a result of hearing your message.  

The same goes for calls to action on email newsletters. Many church leaders mistakingly believe that getting their subscribers to read their email is the primary goal. While that is a win, it is not the biggest win. The chief objective of every email you send should be to inform and call subscribers to action. Usually, this is in the form of a link to your website where they can take a further step. 

Church Newsletter Mistake #7 – Not Measuring Results

As the saying goes, you get what you measure. The great thing about email services is that you can measure almost everything. You can see who received your email, who opens it, and who clicks on it. These are your three chief metrics. 

Each time you send a message, part of your goal should be to improve one or all of those numbers. The more people open your message, the more people can click on it. In the end, it’s all about reaching more people!