Last updated on August 9th, 2023
Want better communication with new or current church members? Read this guide on the power of a texting service for better marketing and communication.
Engagement is an essential part of creating a thriving community of churchgoers.
Whether you want to inform members of an event or inspire them to donate, there’s an efficient way to engage them.
That being with a church texting service.
By the end, you’ll understand the steps to set up SMS campaigns that communicate your important announcements.
We’ll cover:
- What Is A Church Texting Service?
- 3 Benefits Of Church Texting Software
- How To Choose The Right SMS Service For Your Church In 3 Steps
- How To Set up Church Text Messages
- 7 Best Ways To Use Your Text Message Service
- 5 Best Practices When Using Church Texting Software
- Need A Church-Friendly SMS Software To Get Started?
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What Is A Church Texting Service?
A church texting service is cloud software that helps churches to send SMS messages to their church members.
This form of software includes standalone text software and CRM (customer relationship management).
(Text software is self-explanatory, but CRM gives you even more tools to grow and run your church.)
With both, you can create and schedule text campaigns to go out to your list of congregants.
This service is helpful for inviting members back, welcoming new ones, and sharing community updates.
(We’ll cover the many examples of its use cases soon, but let’s first look into the benefits.)
3 Benefits Of Church Texting Software
1. High Open-rates
Gartner reports that SMS open rates can be as high as 98%.
Consistently getting high impressions is the best way to ensure that more people know what you’re communicating.
This is why texting is a better method of reaching your attendees than emails.
With more people aware, you can have better turnouts at gatherings and potentially more volunteers and donations.
2. Faster Responses
Gartner also reported text response rates can be as high as 45%.
If you’re notifying people of something with a deadline, sending a text campaign is one of the best ways to get quicker feedback.
Whether asking for more volunteers or doing a survey, SMS can engage your members faster to meet your timetable.
3. Cost-effective
The money your church generates goes into meaningful causes.
You likely find it important to cost-effectively communicate with your members.
Fortunately, church texting software can be low-cost when you choose the right system.
So you can meet your members where they likely spend a large portion of their time — from their phones.
How To Choose The Right SMS Service For Your Church In 3 Steps
1. Price
Start with a budget when choosing the texting service that fits your church.
Think about how much you’re willing to invest.
Part of your estimate should factor in return on investment.
If your church has many members, text communication could add substantial value to your community. In this case, investing more in a service is a good idea.
On the other hand, if your community is less sizable, a smaller budget could make more sense.
Text messaging usually runs on “credits.” This means you’re billed based on how many texts you send.
2. Ease Of Use
The truth is SMS software can come in a variety of learning curves.
Some are easier to use than others.
It’s best to look for a tool that’s easier to use since it can get you up and running with your text campaigns faster.
And if you find yourself needing to promote an important event or gathering, speed of use can be invaluable (but it all starts with ease of use).
3. Support
Technical support helps you navigate any troubleshooting or confusion around using your software.
Be sure to consider the customer support quality of your text software vendor.
Online reviews are a great place to start.
For example, when we look at VipeCloud’s reviews, helpful and effective customer support is something you consistently read from reviewers.
With excellent support, you can be confident in the long-term use of your church texting service, even if you don’t understand all the bells and whistles.
How To Set up Church Text Messages
Now that you’ve chosen your SMS software for your church using the above criteria, it’s time to set it up.
These steps can apply to most SMS software out there.
1. Sign In To Your Church Text Messaging Platform
Start by signing up for your chosen church texting service.
Once inside, you’ll likely see sections for:
- Your conversations
- Templates
- Text scheduling
- Keywords/triggers
- Custom links
2. Select A Texting Number
You get a specific number for your text campaigns — many text software provide these numbers.
Or they allow you to bring your own local number.
(Sometimes, your SMS service may require getting the number from a third-party partner.)
No matter the route, you can choose from the list of available phone numbers.
Pro-tip: Remember to use a number with your area code since it’ll be easier for your recipients to recognize it as local.
3. Create Templates Based On What Your Text
Texting templates save you time when composing texts.
(Especially with texts your church sends routinely, such as church gathering reminders.)
You can store these text templates in your church CRM or text service for quick access.
3. Come Up With Text Keywords
SMS CRMs let you use keywords to take your campaigns to the next level.
Text keywords are words that trigger a sequence of text messages.
For example, if you’re taking a tally of who will be donating to something, you can have a trigger word that groups all donors together.
You can ask recipients to reply with “yes” if they’ll be donating.
You can then automatically send another message thanking them or linking to your donation page.
In your system, you’ll see every recipient confirming they’re donating. In the future, you can leverage this list to communicate directly with donors specifically.
4. Add Your Contacts To A Text Subscription List
Once you understand the main parts of your texting tool, you can start adding people to your contact list.
Be sure to ask your church members and other contacts if they want to be added to the list. You can request this in multiple ways:
- On your website/landing page
- Social media
- Emails
- At events
Be sure to mention what people can expect from joining your text subscription list (the 7 types of texts to send that we’re going to go over can give you ideas).
5. Assemble Your Texts And Send
You can start composing texts from your SMS software when you want to share something with recipients. You can send to a small group of people by manually selecting them, but you can also send mass texts.
A great way of grouping your contacts is using tags (tags group people by similarities using a word or phrase).
For example, if you want to have members opt-in to specific church groups (men’s groups, women’s groups, teen sports groups, etc.), you can have them text your number with a keyword to opt-in. Once they opt-in, you’ll be able to have members segmented into their relevant groups for future messages.
Once your text is ready, you can send it immediately or schedule it for a specific day or time.
Pro-tip: Use your text analytics to track your SMS campaigns’ performance.
7 Best Ways To Use Your Text Message Service
Here are 7 text ideas you can use for your church.
1. Text Alerts For Religious Attendance
You can increase church attendance by sending text reminders and alerts to congregants. This is very helpful, especially in the event of a service rescheduling or delay.
You can schedule these reminders to be sent routinely and track how it’s helping service turnout.
2. Inspiring Messages
Everyone enjoys an inspiring message to start their day.
Churches commonly send warm and inspiring emails to their attendees, which may get more reach via text.
Since we know that texting gets higher open and response rates on average, inspiring messages can lead to more engagement and connection with your community.
Consider morning inspiration messages and play around with other times of the day.
3. Donation Reminders
Higher donations to your church can make all the difference.
Consider sending donation reminders to your recipients about the importance of their donation.
If there’s a specific amount you’re aiming to raise, you can update your recipients each week about progress toward the goal.
This can help inspire church members to donate continually.
4. Event Invites And Reminders
You can use SMS services to help with more turnout.
Consider mentioning events earlier to gain more awareness of the event (this is known as demand generation).
Using keywords for triggers, you can have your recipients RSVP for your event by replying with a specific word.
As we went over earlier, with your trigger campaign, you can group everyone that has RSVP’d.
5. Volunteering Opportunities
More help often means things get done faster.
For this reason, letting your congregants know of volunteer opportunities means more people can raise their hands to help.
If you have ongoing volunteer opportunities, consider grouping your volunteers using the “tags” feature.
By doing this, you can send special text campaigns for volunteers specifically, with the information they need.
6. Welcoming New Members
Welcome messages are a warm way to have new church members feel recognized and appreciated.
You can create a text template for your welcome texts and automatically send it to those that opt into your text subscription list.
7. Birthday Wishes To Individual People
You can set automated birthday texts for specific people on their special day.
Simply have them add their birthday when they opt into your text list.
5 Best Practices When Using Church Texting Software
1. Have A Clear Call-to-Action
A clear call to action lets your recipient know what you want them to do next.
This can be as simple as telling them to click a link or reply with a keyword.
Without a call to action, you could miss out on seeing success in your text campaigns, so it’s a common marketing best practice.
2. Keep It On The Shorter Side
Text communication is meant to be more efficient and short.
This is a subtle expectation people have when they get messages compared to email.
For that reason, keep texts short and concise.
3. Schedule Texts Ahead Of Time
Consider starting early if you have an event on a specific day or a timetable to let people know of something.
You can create and schedule texts ahead of time to be more efficient.
4. Create A Sequence
As mentioned, trigger keywords are great for creating a text sequence. Sequences allow you to converse with your contacts based on their responses and preferences.
Instead of manually responding to each person every time (which can get time-consuming), your text CRM or SMS system can make the conversations for you.
5. Integrate SMS With Other Technologies
SMS, especially with CRM, can be multi-dimensional.
You can integrate it with other software and technologies.
A perfect example is Zapier.
Zapier is an automation tool that helps you do admin tasks faster.
For example, you can automatically list new text subscribers on a Google spreadsheet if you prefer to have their information there.
There are many combinations of integrations you can do.
Fortunately, partner integrations like these are effortless to find with guides that can help along the way (another reason why support is essential).
Need A Church-Friendly SMS Software To Get Started?
Text message services for churches help you efficiently communicate with your members through a medium they check most: their mobile phones.
You can group your text subscribers based on shared interests and so on.
And when it comes to choosing the best tool for all of this, VipeCloud is a premier choice.
VipeCloud allows churches to deliver their important messaging cost-efficiently and easily.
(Not to mention, you have access to other helpful tools)
If you’d like to learn more about VipeCloud, request a demo so our experts can show it live in action.
You can also claim a 15-day free trial of VipeCloud for your church when you sign up today.
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