Effective Church Communications

GIS: Innovative way to invite people to Easter services: “Egg” your neighborhood!

28 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Egg your neighborhood easter invitation — *"Egg" your neighborhood with an invitation and an egg filled with candy--great idea for outreach and Easter promotion!*

This is one of the most creative ideas I've ever seen to invite people to Easter. It was sent in by a contributor to our Great Idea Swap . In addition to being a great invitation to Easter, it also gives potential visitors great information about church ministries and outreach activities. It is very important to do this because you are letting your community know that the church is about so much more than holding special events.

They may not attend your church for Easter, but if they are new to the community or lonely, the invitation gives information about regular services and small groups. In addition, the church lists Job Search Support and No Cost Financial Counseling and this is a wonderful way to let the community know the church cares about the whole person.

To the left is a picture of the container for the cares below is what the cards look like:

At the end of this article is a link where you download the PDF and editable file of invitation.

Following, I'll let Stephanie, the Communications Director from the church describe how they use and distribute these great promotions: [Read more...]

Effective Easter Outreach: Door-hangers, an invitation you can’t ignore

21 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Door hanger about hope — A person is usually alone when they read the message on a door hanger. It can be an effective way to help them consider the meaning of life, Easter, and personal salvation.

You can't ignore a door-hanger—you literally have to do something with it and even if you toss it, chances are you'll glance at the message. One of the most powerful reasons door hangers can be effective Easter outreach is because often the person reading them is alone and may not be thinking about anything else.

In addition to this quick glance, I recently read an interesting article about the impact of tangible, touchable marketing. It is from a study done by the Centre for experimental Consumer Psychology at Bangor University in the United Kingdom and used MRI brain monitoring to measure response between ads printed on a paper flyer and ads viewed on-screen. Here are their comments:

The ads that could be physically touched as well as viewed stimulated the most activity on the brain. . . By having something physical in front of them, the brain placed more authority and emotional resonance to that ad versus the one the participant could see only via a monitor. The takeaway from this experiment was physical involvement versus just visual involvement equated to a deeper connection. . . . . . It's also an important reminder that effective marketing needs to integrate all faces of the tools available, from print media to email, display ads to social media, and word-of-mouth to influencer marketing campaigns.
http://bit.ly/2ieEhkU

Here is one more reason door hangers can be effective Easter outreach—often the person reading them is alone and may not be thinking about anything else.

Finally, there isn't anything magical about print or door hangers, but in addition to the reasons above, their low-cost and the ability to involve your congregation when you give them out (discussed in the article here) make them a useful addition to your Easter mix of outreach.

As the following images illustrate, we have a selection of door hangers for you to choose from for Easter. Some have room on them for church information on the front, others you can put it on the second side. One has a message for you about hope and that is below the images illustrated.

Message on the back of the door hanger about hope:

[Read more...]

An inexpensive, easy and effective outreach tool for holidays and church special events—Door-hangers

21 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Door hangers are great outreach tools! — Door hangers are great outreach tools that are inexpensive and can involve your entire congregation.

When considering community or neighborhood outreach for Easter, Christmas, Fall events, and other special occasions, many churches first think of postcards. Postcards do have many advantages and they are a proven tool for outreach, but there is another tool that can be equally effective and can cost little to produce—that tool is a door-hanger. The article here gives you an overview of how to use them and a resource list, on the TEMPLATES section you can find door hangers for various holidays.

One advantage a door-hanger has it that, unlike a postcard, which can get lost in a large pile of junk mail, a household seldom gets more than one door-hanger at a time. When a person picks it up and carries it inside, chances are that person will read at least some of it.

No postage required—how to get them out to the neighborhood

The distribution of door-hangers is not only cost-effective, because you don’t have to pay postage, but it is a way for your congregation to be involved in outreach. I have described this method in the past as a way to get your congregation involved in outreach to their communities using postcards, but it also works well for door-hanger distribution, here it is: [Read more...]

Recipe for Greek Easter Bread, an outreach treat for Easter guests

20 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn 1 Comment

This delicious Easter bread recipe is a fun way to invite people to attend your Easter events.

Which would you rather get to encourage you to come to church for Easter? A postcard that tells you how wonderful the church is or a really great recipe? Of course churches are going to talk about how wonderful they are at Easter time, but a great recipe for free—that's different and might get attention in a way something else won't.

Everybody loves recipes and this Greek Easter Bread is exceptionally delicious. It's my version of a recipe given to me years ago by a very dear Greek friend. It's a sweet yeast bread (not a coffee cake) and bakes up beautifully. In addition to serving the main version for Easter, I came up with an alternate version to serve with soup, especially something like tortilla soup, any time of the year. In this variation, you add jalapeno peppers and cheddar cheese--it is sooooooooooo good. The regular version makes great French Toast and the Cheddar/Jalapeno version is fantastic oven-toasted. Either way, it's something everyone would love.

Below are finished cards for the recipe that you can personalize on the back and below I included a print of the recipe. The link to the ZIP file for them is at the end of this article.