Archive for Giveaways
Great Christmas Church Marketing Ideas from Fellowship Church, Creative Pastors
Posted by: | CommentsJust got the Creative Pastors email newsletter [subscribe here] from Fellowship Church‘s Ed Young and I love the ideas they are considering for getting the word out for the Christmas season:
We’re putting together a mixed-media marketing campaign including promotional packs for local businesses, car antenna balls, a direct mail send out, and something we’ve never tried before. We’re printing vibrant t-shirts featuring our Christmas service information and giving them away to our entire church to wear throughout their Christmas shopping, with an emphasis on one specific shopping day. Seeing 20,000 Fellowship Church t-shirts throughout the Dallas/Ft. Worth area is a great way to start a conversation and invite someone to our Christmas services!
I agree! Great stuff and ideas! I particularly like the car antenna balls and T-shirt ideas. Around Oklahoma City where I live, I always see tons of super-cool LifeChurch bumper stickers. What cheap advertising!
Using a Free Rockin’ Offer for Your Church’s Website
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the most overlooked tools for maximizing your rockin’ church website is the FREE OFFER – giving away something of tangible value to your prospective guests.
This church in New York City gives away a free book, which costs less than a dollar, to guests in their area. In turn, guests fill out a short online survey.
Great Church Guest Giveaways: Booklets, Part 4
Posted by: | CommentsWell, I’ve talked about using booklets for your church’s guest giveaways in three previous posts. [Read all four posts of this series here: 1, 2, 3, 4]. Now it’s time to talk about designing an online form to take requests for those booklets.
There’s a couple of reasons I suggest using an online request form:
- It makes it easier for people to request them
- You can tie it in with a survey
- It cuts down on what could be a barrage of phone calls
- Requests can be made 24/7
Here’s where it gets a little tricky — especially for those [like me] with no coding experience. But thankfully, there are resources available online that can give you a basic form to take online requests for your booklet offer.
Here are a couple of examples of online forms:
- Midwestern Seminary’s “Answering the Call” booklet — One I helped produce
- The Journey Church in New York City — A church plant in Manhattan
Here are a couple of sites that generate online forms you could use:
- Icebrrg
- The Form Assembly
- JotForm
- Wufoo – This seems to be a great site
Note: Some of these sites put a limit on the number of requests done for free before you have to pay. Be sure and investigate this before committing.
Read all four posts of this series here: 1, 2, 3, 4
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Great Church Guest Giveaways: Booklets, Part 3
Posted by: | Comments
Here are a couple of booklet ideas:
- Rick Warren’s “What on Earth Am I Here For?”– This booklet is based on the first seven chapters of Rick Warren’s bestselling “Purpose Driven Life” book.
- Create your own booklet – Have you preached a good sermon series on the family, parenting or marriage? Using your notes as a guide, have someone transcribe your audio sermons, edit the draft down into a readable form, divide into chapters, then format it into a booklet templates and have them printed at Lulu, CafePress, or email my friend Steve [steve@covingtongroup.net] at the Covington Group in Kansas City (he printed the seminary booklet and offers great prices with quality).
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Great Church Guest Givewaway Offers: Booklets, Part 2
Posted by: | CommentsIn Part 1 of this series — Great Church Guest Giveaway Offers: Booklets [Read all four posts of this series here: 1, 2, 3, 4] — I gave 6 reasons for using booklets for free offers … summarizing them, they are:
1. They’re cheap
2. They beat the ol’ standard pen or mug giveaway
3. They appeal to felt needs
4. They give value
5. You can track requests and manage follow up better
6. They help you evaluate the offer’s effectiveness
Here’s one more reason to use a booklet giveaway — I’ve seen it work brilliantly.
As the communications director at my former place of employment [a seminary], I helped produce a short booklet (42 pages or so) that was titled “Answering the Call: Understanding God’s Call to Vocational Ministry.
The booklet included articles on how to discern God’s calling to ministry, reasons why a “called” person should attend seminary, what a student learns at seminary, etc. etc. I wrote one article — “10 Reasons to Come to Midwestern” — and asked the dean [on seminary studies], our theology prof [on discerning a call], and VP for student services [why they should come to seminary] to write the others.
For the cover, I purchased this incredible (and inspirational) stock photo from AlaskaStock.com for a VERY reasonable price. [I just love to look around that site to take in God's beautiful creation!]
We initially printed 2,000 booklets and ran out within a couple of months. A story [press release] on our online denominational news service generated roughly 100 requests in the first day.
In two years, we sent out 1,600 copies directly [printing roughly 7,500 in total] to those who requested them through our Web site form.
Half of those 1,6000 requests came straight from the Web site promo alone (I had no idea the number of people surfing our site, but the booklet allowed us to make a personal contact with them). The other half roughly came from our print advertisements, placed in our denomination’s state newspapers.
Cost per booklet: About 75 cents!
[My printing contact for the booklet? Steve at The Covington Group. Great prices, great quality, outstanding service.]
THE BOOKLET’S IMPACT
Our recruiting department loved them … the balance of those 7,500 printed were given out at conventions, recruiting events, to prospective students who made campus visits, their pastors, our denominational leaders, etc.
Our administration loved them … they could take that to donor meetings, trustee meetings.
But most importantly — the recipients, from best I could tell, loved them and appreciated the wisdom and counsel they received from them.
Not all of the booklet recipients came to the seminary — not even close — but we got our money’s worth in PR, publicity, and … ministry.
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NEXT SERIES POST: Part 3: Ideas for Your Own Church Booklet Giveaway
COMING UP in the “Great Guest Givewaway Ideas: Booklet” Series:
Part 4: Designing an Online Request Form
Read all four posts of this series here: 1, 2, 3, 4
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