This week, we’re gonna discuss some tools to help you communicate with the members of your church or anyone else out there who wants to follow what is going on with your ministry.  In this article, we will discuss a few categories of communication that you can take advantage of cheaply and without a computer science degree.  This is not at all a definitive list, but the services listed in each category are the ones that we at the ROC use on a weekly basis.


E-Mail
We use a service called Constant Contact (http://www.constantcontact.com) to do our email communication.  For just $15 a month, you can send out as many e-mails you want to up to 500 different email addresses.  The next price point of $30 a month enables up to 2500 different email address, and on up from there.  For an additional $5 a month, you can also host images on their server and use them in your emails for a more personal effect.  A handy feature is that you can set up multiple lists of email addresses for different audiences (ie, one list that only goes out to home group leaders, or men, or youth for example).  Another great feature of Constant Contact is that it comes with dozens of templates with nearly every look imaginable to really grab people’s attention.

Now at the ROC, we send out weekly emails, usually by Monday night each week detailing all of the week’s upcoming events.  We also convert the emails into a web page that we post on the ROC’s website every week so that visitors who are not subscribed to the email list can still see whats happening at the church.  You can view this week’s email here (http://revivaloutreach.net/pages/e-news.htm).  Make sure that this link is easy to find on your website.  Another feature that you really need to have on your website is a large Subscribe button, image, or link that is very easy for people who visit your site to see.  This is the ROC’s, which is located directly under our side panel navigation:

One problem we have run into with emails is that some members of our church, particularly the more mature crowd, only checks their inbox once a week.  But, what can ya do?


Text Messages
By now, most everyone under the age of 30 uses the text messaging feature on their cell phone at least once every day.  Most teenagers send and receive text messages upwards of 20 times a day.  All and all, of the 2.4 billion cell phone users in the world, 74% of them use text messaging.  While some of you may want nothing to do with text messages, you can’t ignore the usage of it by others, and thus its ability to communicate with them.  This is where a online service called EZ Texting comes in (http://www.eztexting.com).

EZ Texting allows you to log into a website, and send out a short message (up to 130 characters long) to your entire contact list’s cell phones.  The service only costs 2.5 cents per text message sent (so if you have 1,000 people in your contact list, each mass text message sent to them all would only cost $25).

Right now, at the ROC we only utilize this service to do day-of reminders to people about important events.  But a powerful use of this text message service is for your intercessors.  Say that one of your members gets in a car wreck and is being rushed to the hospital.  Once someone finds out about the incident, they could send out a text message to all of your intercessors and instantly you could have several dozen people praying for that person.  And thats just one possibility.

Just like Constant Contact, EZ Texting allows you to put a link on your website so that people can sign up to get text messages.

As with all of these communication services, make sure that you give people the option of signing up for the service, or not signing up for the service.  Don’t just put their number or email into the service you’re using.  Text messages, for instance, do cost money for the people receiving them.


Automated Voice Messages
Automated voice messages, few people like receiving them, but if they are from someone you know with information that you care about, you don’t mind listening to them.  Haha.  Anyway, a company called Voice Shot (http://www.voiceshot.com) allows you to send out messages that you record to people on your contact list.  Since nearly everyone has either a cell phone or a home phone with a answering machine, this is a great way to get a fast message out to a large number of people without contacting them individually.

Voiceshot is more expensive than the other two options, but it is highly effective, again, because while not everyone uses text messages or email, nearly everyone has a phone.  Voiceshot’s price is 12 cents per one minute call.  So another words, a call going out to 50 of your people will cost $6.  I say per one minute call because if your voice message going over a minute, they will charge you another 12 cents.  But that shouldn’t be a issue in that people don’t want to sit and listen to message longer than a minute anyway.  We keep ours short and to the point, generally around 30 seconds.

Conclusion
As I said before, these are not all of the methods that you can use to communicate with your people.  But the gist of this article is to get you thinking.  Announcements from the pulpit or in the Sunday morning bulletin just don’t cut it anymore in people’s busy lives.  Find ways to get them the information that you want them to have in ways that make it easy for them.

Send me a message on my profile if you have any questions.